A Good Day for Poetry

Poetry wise, I had a reasonably productive day. I wrote several short poems, although only three that I deemed worthy of posting at Rattle’s Anything Goes poetry page, and of those three one was blatantly political so it probably won’t go in my next book. Not that I never include political poems in my books but, for the most part, I feel that political poetry does not age well, and this wasn’t one of the exceptional ones.
It was a productive day because I went on a binge of responding to people’s Facebook posts in rhyme, which I sometimes do. Most people are not impressed, the rhyming comments generally get fewer likes and responses than my other comments, and are often ignored entirely. Sometimes, they can end a whole thread, which figures. If Facebook is analogous to live conversation, posting a poem is about the same as speaking in rhyme during the course of an ordinary conversation. People will think it’s sort of weird and stare blankly into space, waiting for someone else to break the awkward silence and change the subject.
Yes, I speak from experience. There have been times in my classes when I’ve been bored and broke into rhyme. Most students never noticed, and I can’t recall a single instance where anybody was impressed.
Still, for me, it’s a good writing prompt and two out of five or six is way better than nothing out of nothing, so ….it was a good day.