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Why Poetry Matters
I never set out to be a poet. I wanted to be a novelist. It just didn’t turn out that way. Every time I pick up a notebook and sit down to write, I take it on faith that something of value will make its way from my heart to my head and through my pencil onto the page. No one needs to read penciled scrawlings for them to have value, but people do read them, sometimes, again and again.
I am at that stage in my poetry adventure where better journals are beginning to accept my work. It is a tedious, wonderful, and exciting process — this submitting of work for publication. It is also great to see your work in print, to know that something inside you has made its way out and is now free to affect others. It is also frightening.
Once a piece has been published, it is free of you, but you will never be free of it. Some will love it. Others will hate it. Still others will find the work underrated, banal, derivative, or boring. Poets have to learn to live with that.
See, every once in a while a poet manages to crank out a piece that moves another in some profound way. Art, music, and poetry can all do that — connect us and remind us that we can still find commonality of feeling. And that really matters.
