The temptation here is to be lengthy, but I'm going to try my best to contain myself. What I'm hoping to do with this nascent little blog is extremely exciting for me, and hopefully a couple other people out there won't mind it too much either.
A Brief Life Story (I apologize)
Sometime during my freshman year in college, I started to consider myself a poet, which, in retrospect, was arrogant and incredibly premature. I was far more drawn to images of an angsty Dylan Thomas smoking his umpteenth cigarette and brooding over his next masterpiece than I was to his poems, or anyone else's for that matter. But, on the bright side, this strange attraction to poets, and the aura that surrounded them, got me reading a bit of poetry.
Why I Suck as a Poet
Initially, and not to my credit, it was Charles Bukowski who I really fell for. I devoured volumes of his works for weeks on end, and, at this point, I can probably say quite honestly that I've read at least 75% of his drunken ravings.
Although I'm not by any means trying to bash Bukowski, I have to admit that he wasn't the best influence on my writing. He made poetry seem easy, and his blunt, staccato prose-poems were all too tempting to emulate, justifying my continual production of unpolished and unedited work that, in retrospect, desperately needed a formalist touch.
Why that is Kind of a Good Thing
Luckily, this epiphany did strike me when, well into my sophomore year, I came across some of my early poems and realized what an atrocious poet I really was. Whatever Bukowski had that made his no-frills rants so moving and enjoyable was simply not present in my freshman self. So, I took a good long swig of humility, and went back to the starting line.
Which is why I'm here right now.
Why this Blog Might be Worth Your Time
The purpose of this blog is to give me an incentive to develop as a poet, to write some not-so-steller stuff, and post it anyways. I'm hoping that my utter amateurishness will pay off, if not for me, then for some other wanna-be poets who checks out this site.
I intend to read poems vociferously,which is something I've done on and off many times before. And I intend to post these poems, to analyze these poems, to figure out what works, and to try and figure how out the heck I can learn from them, which is something I've never tried before.
I'm going to provide a more specific explanation of what this blog is all about in my next post, but, for now, for anyone who happens to stumble upon this, I'm very glad to meet you, and I'm very much looking foward to discussing a poem or two in the future.
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