How can you tell when a poem you are writing becomes real enough to be a poem? To be finished? Published? Published in a book?
Or conversely, how can you tell when it has fallen like a failed meringue?
Sometimes it is obvious, but I find it gets harder the shorter the poem.
January 5, 2013 at 8:59 pm
The heart’s last farewell in a sentence of unrequited love. Thanks for sharing. Sorry, I had a poetic moment.
January 5, 2013 at 10:05 pm
You know how it looks when a whale is just under the water, and the water looks like it’s become some other infinitely mysterious thing? When the words do that. At least with other people’s poems. And sometimes with mine, when things are working sort of well.
January 5, 2013 at 10:16 pm
D–when things both are and are not themselves…
January 5, 2013 at 10:53 pm
A poem is always done and never done… and that is why one sees in books of poems that “an earlier version of Poem blah blah was published in journal this or that”
January 6, 2013 at 3:11 am
Ivan says that a carving is never truly done. Which may be profound, but is not terribly helpful!
January 6, 2013 at 3:55 pm
This is the key question. I wrote a poem draft this morning and got really excited about it but it might be a fallen meringue.