I must say, I heartily approve of the posting of original poems on this thread.
Here is my point: the only way we get to share each other's work on this site is if the poem is offered for comment on one of the crit-boards, or appears in a mag we all read.
In the first case, we are reading the poem in a certain way - looking for problems and thinking about solutions, and this affects our reception of the poem. In the second case, as recent stats have shown, only a small percentage of what we write ends up in mags or books.
By feeling free to post the occasional and relevant poem in GT threads, as part of the conversation, we can all get to see work from each other which might never otherwise be seen. The poems that fall between the cracks.
Some might object that to expose poems in this way might be to risk their chances of future publication. But there is nothing to stop members from editing-out their poems from the thread after a few days, which mean that the poems would have even less exposure than on the crit-boards. All poems posted on a workshop site should be given this leeway.
Anyway, my day would have been a great deal less interesting without the above poems by Gail, Lee and Janet.
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