Sunday, November 13, 2011

POE-try

Well, since I wrote that Edgar Allen Poe post last night, I've been obsessing about poetry. I've been reading through old poems that I wrote ages ago, I've been writing new ones and I've been looking through old notebooks with half-written poems that I never finished.

Poetry was what really made me fall in love with writing. In fact, I didn't start really committing myself to writing novels until I decided I probably couldn't make a career out of writing poetry. Although, even my first novel is threaded with poetry. That is actually the linchpin in the book. The whole plot swings along a pendulum of poetry and depending on what the mysterious poet is doing in the book, the plot adjusts accordingly...and that is all I can say because the agent still has an exclusive for another few weeks, so I'll leave it at that for that book, but in short, I love poetry.

As I was writing my first book, I actually wrote it around the poetry. The reader doesn't even really notice the poems in there, they kind of seem like an afterthought...an important afterthought, but as I was writing it, I wrote the poems before I wrote the chapters...and then the plot formed around that. I think I might make that my little trademark because I do love writing poetry so much, I can't imagine just writing novels and falling away from the poetry aspect of writing.

Wouldn't that be cool? To always write books with some sort of poetic aspect laced through, where the reader might not even know they're reading poetry?

Again, hats off to my idol Stevie Nicks for incorporating the most beautiful poetic prose into some of the most wonderful songs the billboard charts have ever seen and people who ordinarily wouldn't have, enjoyed poetry without even knowing it.

I'm considering posting some of my poetry up here, but for some reason, that's a big step for me :) Not even my blog entries, which in their own way are a form of journaling are as cathartic as my poetry...those are about as personal as it gets...but the good thing is that most of them are pretty cryptic. I learned from the best!

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