I have a longstanding obsession with silence. Perhaps it’s not that longstanding. I became aware of silence in graduate school. I began to focus on how a poet’s lines interacted with the white space and the silence. It became – and still is – a point of consideration in my own work.
Vasko Popa
National Poetry Month: Objects
My own poetry often has few details. I think the shift occurred when I became tired of narrative poetry. I started to focus on other things, one of them being the objects themselves. The physical things – a hand or an elephant – became more important than a plot. The story still existed, but it became an undercurrent. Things were kept beneath the surface, not to be malicious or indirect but because the objects were growing in power. They had their own stories to tell if I’d let them.
Eight Poets for Communicators
Spin Sucks has been having entirely too much fun celebrating fiction. I’ve enjoyed the celebration – I enjoy fiction – but I feel as though poets and poetry need some attention. Thus, I’m writing my own post about poetry and posting it here.