Tom: My first reaction was simply something novel, but I think the answer is a little more complicated. One of the few interesting things about putting a manuscript together is that it forces you to look at your work as a whole and to think about ways it can be organized. I think the constant revision and rethinking slowly made me realize that I am essentially a narrative poet instead of a classic lyric poet in that my poems tend to try to tell a story instead of paint a picture of a scene in detail. It was kinduva shock for me at first because I had associated narrative poetry with dull, prosy long poems, but I see things differently now.
I am a creature of the suburbs, and not very good at the nature stuff. Oddly though, my stuff mostly seems to have urban backdrops--perhaps because that's where I see compression and tensions that give rise to stories for poetry.
With the light verse, we have the problem that we don't have a shared high culture to speak of any more, so most people aren't going to get jokey poems about the Iliad or even most of the Bible. I guess that shaves me down to two or three subjects for the most part--"everyday" events, my own shortcomings and (mostly) popular culture. You'll see in the Light poems a few issues down the road a villanelle about Mick Jagger, a rondeau about the National Enquirer, a sonnet about a movie/comic book character and the like.
|
Linear Mode
