"[W]e all should realize, that just as there is no revolution worth attending unless you can dance, any struggle worth engaging has a poet’s heart. . .pain, effort, caring, anger and especially humor made more meaningful as well as beautiful through their apt and artful expression, set to the rhythms of campfire crackle and late night recitation, trumpeted from the mouths of the young and uncompromised, echoed on mountain cliffs as well as glass fronted buildings, recorded with music or cached like survival food, knives and blankets in the pages of patiently hopeful books."
--Wolf (from a Web site piece)
I've been writing poetry (and prose), off and on, for thirty (!) years, since I was 15. Now, I might look at this critically, even self-defeatingly because I've mostly chosen to write in private, sharing only occasionally, for many reasons. Some of those reasons have included my fear of stating the obvious (and I STILL fear this!) and being harshly judged on my writing; of being "pinned down" by ideas I've written about and later learned better than; of not wanting to "sell myself" by attempting to have my work published; of simply not being "good enough.". . . The list goes on, and just as I can state reasons why not, I can also refute them with why sos, but the best way to do that is to simply write and share.
And so, this year I've decided to push my envelope of comfort a bit by attempting to get a poem or two published. . . just to prove to myself that I CAN do it, that I'm not merely afraid of failure. . . because I love poetry and even have a certain admiration for those who write "bad" poetry (or that which I think is too sentimental or obvious) and boldly proclaim it! Yes. . . poetry is the natural language of the heart, the emotions, intense beauty recognized and eagerly consumed, language that expresses our uniqueness to be celebrated.
As Eliot so beautifully writes in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (which the Academy of American Poets quotes from), "Do I dare disturb the universe?" I say, please do, even if no one reads.
