PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

It was a comment day and a slipping into verse from time to time - inevitably. The new writers are exciting and I hope the ones with the "bug" stay around a long time. The older writers, the veterans, are in excellent form also. Enjoyed the reading today. No such thing as a bad poem, just a late edit. When I submit again, the lines will be shorter - the verses condensed in search of pure emotion, absolute utterance. I found a bit of that today and was amazed. Sometimes standing alone, often inside a poem nesting, hiding inside the verbosity of expression. What can be said extensively can be captured by a title, a closing line, an opening line.

I once argued with a nun over the validity of personal aesthetics. After she berated me publically, I kept my opinion and discovered I was right and she was institutionalized. The rebel in me would not accept a narrow definition of art and so far, I never have. Writing form poetry is an exercise, but without the ultimate discipline to infuse the structure with enlightenment and personal expression, what's the point?

To write is to share the self. To transfer wisdom from the brain to another's brain. To carve from nothing (blank page/screen) some living thing that can endure and cause emotional maturation. How can that be confined to a textbook definition, an editor's perception of the acceptable. A system that excludes instead of embraces is not system for a Republic. Dreaming of democratic ideologies, freedom lives only in the hearts and minds of the individual.

slc

August 4, 2014