I know there’s nothing mystical about the number 100, but it seems like a good day to have a serious review of my titling practice. It feels like a growing panic is engulfing me as I see the days fall away, and though it’s undoubtedly quicker and easier, it also feels like I’m leaving the blog unfinished. On the other hand, when I write titles by number it hides the fact that some days I just can’t be bothered, wher5eas titles don’t hide it so well. By tomorrow I will have reached a conclusion. The conclusion could be that I carry on numbering, or that I start using titles again. Or simply that I can’t be bothered to make a decision. Watch this space . . .
Another proper step in my poetic progress has been taken. Nothing major, so don’t expect too much. It’s just that so many of my poems are just marking time – same sort of poem, same magazines, more of the same . . .
Last month I submitted some tanka to an Australian magazine called Eucalypt. It’s a well known magazine, which specialises in tanka. I’ve never submitted to it before, and I’ve never sent tanka to a specialiost6 tanka magazine before. Result – an acceptance.
Second result – a feeling that I have advanced a little further along the road to getting better. I know it’s not a very precise measure of either progress or my targets, but it does feel like progress, all the same. Of course, I’m now left wondering what I need to do next to feel more like a serious poet. In the 1950s I could just have worn a beret, but these days it’s not so easy to look distinctively poetic.
What constitutes the difference between a poet and a serious poet? I have read some of your work and you are obviously a poet. Would becoming a serious poet make you unreadable for an amateur poetry reader like myself?
In my mind the difference is that I should take control and have some direction instead of pottering around and getting accepted almost by accident.
This shouldn’t affect your ability to read it. It will still be doggerel, but will conceal a hidden agenda.
Congratulations on another acceptance, Quercus! It sounds like you are making very good progress.
Thank you. I’m just waiting for the “one step back” part of the process now. 🙂
One step back, two steps forwards. 🙂
🙂 That’s why I worry when it all seems to be going forwards!
Good luck down under
For a moment I thought you were talking about something else . . .
It’s my age, you know. 🙂