Poetry

Today I worked on my poetry "collection." (I use quotation marks because there are only five poems so far, so I'm not sure that they qualify as a collection. They are, however, related somewhat, so perhaps they do qualify.) They are free-verse poems based on stories that my father-in-law has told me about his childhood. The poems are Radio, Shoes, Horseradish, Football, and today's new one, Outhouse. There is very little market for poetry, but these were just begging to be written. It's amazing how much time and energy go into the artful compression of thought that makes poetry poetry. Exact, sparse, and imageful words take effort; there is a lot of paring away of unnecessary bits. Sometimes I worry that I take so much away that the image is visible only to me, like covering up most of a photograph and expecting someone else to recognize the picture: it seems so obvious to the one doing the covering or the paring. Perhaps I'll publish some of the poems (or parts of them) here at some point.