What is it about a certain type of writing that can grab us over all others? We’re all lured in by different forms of storytelling, and it’s fascinating to hear about those eureka moments that capture a reader and/or writer’s loyalty to a genre.
I’ve always been drawn to fiction writing, particularly children’s fiction, but basically, when you read a good novel, you find yourself wanting to write one just like it. For a time, though, I was drawn, well, more forced, into the poetry world, and for several years, I found myself putting in the work to make myself the best poet I could be and found modest success before finally pivoting back to fiction writing.
Below is my brief career in poetry. I’d love to hear about your relationship with poetry, your favorite poets and poems, or even read your poetry. Leave your responses and links in the comments and/or email me at laura@laurasbooksandblogs.com.
Early poetry
Like many people, my first introduction to poetry was through famous nursery rhymes. One of my favorite books was a board book called Baby’s Mother Goose. These short little rhyming stories were easy to memorize, especially when paired with the sing-song rhythm that my parents read them to me in.
When I was in the first grade, I won a reading contest at school, and my teacher gifted me a copy of The Random House Book of Poetry for Children. It was a big, thick hardcover with multiple illustrated poems on each page.
They were organized by season and featured poems from multiple famous and anonymous children’s poets. Some were funny, some serious, some action-packed, and some calm and thoughtful. I loved how you could just flip through to your favorite ones or just read a few pages at a time without there being a chronological order to follow. Each story covered or subject tackled was wrapped up within a few lines or more.
Middle school
In the seventh grade, I remember working on a big poetry project for English class. Our teacher taught us several different styles of poetry, and we had to write a poem in each style. We then typed them up on the computer, printed them, out, added a border for each made of construction paper, and bound them in a manilla folder which also had a poem with our name on the front.
My poems didn’t have a lot of depth to them, but I also don’t think anyone’s did. Still, I remember being very proud of my finished project, I think because it was such an undertaking, but it was fun to really put together a little chapbook of poems complete with illustrations and typed out instead of handwritten. It definitely sparked my interest in terms of how to pull together a book of writing, even in a very primitive form.
High school
In high school, poetry was pretty much non-existent in my life. We didn’t study it in school. It wasn’t a shelf that I stopped at while borrowing books at the library. And I definitely didn’t attempt to write any.
The only poetry book that I was drawn to during that time was Tim Burton’s The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy. These poems read like a dark Shel Silverstein collection which suited my moody teen disposition at the time.
Other than that, the only thing that came close to poetry was studying the lyrics to my favorite songs printed in my CD covers. My angsty pop punk, rock, and grunge albums spoke to me, but they never felt like something that I could mimic, especially without knowing how to play any sort of rock instrument whatsoever. They were just something to admire as a fan.
For more on this, see my post What It Was Like to Be a Teenager in the 2000s Part 1 and Part 2.
College
So, when poetry came up as a main source of the curriculum for my creative writing degree in college, I was feeling a little intimidated. In my first day of creative writing class, our teacher started handing out poems that didn’t rhyme, that were full of flowery, soul-bearing stanzas, and that had a rhythm to them that I had never heard before.
During our first workshop, my classmates, mostly freshmen, came to class with insightful poems about the streets of Pittsburgh that made them feel so worldly and philosophical. They loved independent films and music that I’d never heard of and liked to write about controversial topics like abortion and the AIDS epidemic.
My first creative writing teacher was an older man who basically told everyone that their poems were great and full of promise. However, he also offered and encouraged constructive criticism to help improve the poems. I scribbled down his and my classmates’ notes for improvement with such grateful eagerness. I knew I could do better. I just needed to be pointed in the right direction.
I remember an English teacher in high school telling us that we were too young to write anything of substance yet because we hadn’t lived enough yet. That really stuck with me, and I was deeply offended at the time, believing that I had lived through a lot already. In hindsight, I believe she was right, but that was such an unnecessary and discouraging thing to say to an honors English class.
This woman prepared me for my next poetry teacher, though, an established Pittsburgh poet who wasn’t going to sugarcoat anything. She wanted controversy and total exposure, two things that did not fit with my personality. My deepest, darkest feelings were nobody’s business but my own, and if I was going to inject it into my work, it was going to be behind the guise of fictional characters in fictional situations, not bled out into the page in metered couplets.
My college professor was good about introducing us to established poets, other than herself. She even brought a few of them to read for us and give us some tips about how to present your work to readers, both written and oral.
My professor encouraged me to read a poet named Judith Vollmer. She wrote in a more straightforward, almost prosy way that seemed to mirror my style. After mimicking a style of hers, I got my first genuine encouragement from this professor.
I did my best in her classes throughout the years, and I got credit for that, but I knew that she knew that I was no poet. Still, it didn’t stop me from taking the text step: trying to get published.
Publications
My college classes kind of glossed over the submissions process. The publishing world at the time was transitioning from hard copy to online submissions. So, you were probably going to find a mix of publications that wanted you to mail in your submissions as well as a self-addressed stamped envelope in order to receive a response, usually a denial of your work. And if they did accept your work, the payment was usually just in copies with maybe a small monetary prize of $10 to $20.
These publications also encouraged you to buy a copy of their work in order to get a sense of the types of poetry that they published. Then, you had a better shot of ending up in the “yes” pile. But that could get pricey too.
I started with the best pieces from the work I’d done in school. In the meantime, I’d work on new pieces, un-workshopped pieces that only I was able to judge as good or bad.
I wrote about things I knew, like core memories, movies, or dreams I’d had. But I still didn’t have a strong sense of rhythm, a varied vocabulary, and I had not mastered a way of explaining myself in clear, brief imagery rather than in the prosy way of overexplaining that I was more comfortable with.
One thing college had prepared me for was to expect a lot of rejection. A lot. Like, 1 publication for every 100 denials. And to be patient.
It was fun to get one of my SASEs back in the mail, even if it was a rejection. Sometimes it even came with some advice. I still had that 100 to 1 ratio in my head which kept me going.
Successes in poetry
My first successes, other than the work I had published my college’s publications, were in other college publications that were not very competitive and seemed to accept many submissions. I got paid in copies, as promised, but it felt good to see my work and my bio in a printed publication, and I felt like that was good enough for my portfolio.
My first acceptances in non-college-based literary journals felt like the real deal, though. Even if I didn’t get paid, it still felt like I was making progress.
Then, one Friday, after a particularly hard week, I got a package in the mail which contained my contributor’s copy of a literary journal I’d been accepted in. “Wouldn’t it be nice if there was some kind of surprise payment in this package,” I thought to myself, “Even if it was $10.” And in some psychic moment, as I tore open the package, out with the journal came a check for none other than $10.
I ran to the bank and cashed that check so fast, spending half of my earnings on dinner, a $5 Footlong from Subway down the street. I don’t think I would have been happier had I won a Pulitzer.
Things got easier, or at least cheaper, once submissions were entirely online. I had fun pulling submissions together and selecting the poems that I thought would work best for the publication. I still rarely bought copies of each publication. I was playing a numbers game, and I didn’t really have the funds to be buying a copy of every publication that I submitted to.
I sometimes wondered if buying a copy improved your chances of publication. After all, this was a business, and I felt like it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that they would take that into consideration. But I do feel that it probably didn’t make much of a difference, if any.
Ending my brief career in poetry
Once I commit to something, it’s hard to stop. I like to see it through, and I wanted to see if I could make it into the Paris Review or any of the other top poetry journals. Ultimately, though, even with my small successes, I didn’t feel like I was spending my writing time writing what I wanted. I was chasing a goal that had been forced upon me, and now that I was free to do what I wanted, that’s exactly what I wanted to do.
The writing industry is a very competitive and challenging one. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, for most, and even though I had a momentum going with poetry, it felt like a relief to allow myself to abandon it.
I still don’t feel like I’m a good poet. I just got lucky a few times. I played to win, and sometimes I hit at just the right time.
I know I shouldn’t consider my time as a poet a career. It didn’t sustain me at all financially. But it did consume my writing time. It also pushed me outside of my comfort zone and helped to reroute me towards my originally intended path.
I’m still super impressed by poets and the lines they can pull together to help to describe a feeling or moment in a very unique and deep way. I still don’t read a lot of poetry. Reading slowly and absorbing every word is just difficult for my overactive brain. But it’s an impressive skill that I sometimes think of dabbling at again, just to see if I have improved as my worldview, experience, and overall writing skills have evolved over the years.
Throughout the life of this blog, I’ve interviewed multiple poets and featured poetry books that have been able to pull off work that I never could. Some indie poets you should actually read include.
Check them out! And again, share your comments on poetry, poets, and your personal experiences in the comments!
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