20190630.0430

I have posted to this webspace on 30 June in each of the six most recent previous years, 2013 through 2018. Interestingly enough, each is a work of verse, which I think is the first time I've had such an alignment in the month's retrospection. Looking back, I cringe at some of the poor proofreading I see myself as having allowed; I am supposed to be more professional than to do so, at least as egregiously as I see in my own work. Some errors always sneak through, as a glance at most any work will reveal, so I am in good company. But it still grates on me, with my PhD in English and years of doing this kind of thing, that I let it happen and that I see it again.
It should grate on me more that the quality of my work is as it is. I have occasional bits of goodness, as moving between the fourth and fifth stanzas in the 2015 piece (though it would be better without punctuation, I think, more amenable to the multiple readings). The end of the 2017 piece is another such spot, with the image of the cracked mirror coming up suddenly and speaking to the limits and problems of the backward look. (I should be less nostalgic. I know it's bad. I still indulge in it. I'm not proud of doing so, though I cannot seem to stop it.) Other little bits pop up in the other writing that I do, I'm sure; I could find them did I look for them more assiduously. I am even sure that, taken together, the little bits of goodness add up to a single, solid poem.
But more of my verse is like that in the 2013 piece, with the errors, or the 2014 or 2016 pieces, that read more like prose crammed into verse form than as works that elude and evade, that force a reader to follow along to tease out meaning. No, I too often flatly state my intent, and if there is ambiguity to be found, it is only that which inheres in all language, since every word is itself an abstraction, a set of sounds that certain people agree means the kind of thing that is being described. Poetry should tease, should titillate, should demand more engagement from its readers than prose usually does--and in the engagement, lodge deeper with them than words framed otherwise would do. I am not often of such subtlety of mind as to plan out a path for the reader's thoughts to follow without leaving it wide and straight--and devoid of the scenery that makes travel a joy when it is a joy.
Still, I can but practice more, hoping in that practice to make something of my writing and, having made something of it, make it return to my benefit and that of those about whom I care. I do what I do for them, most of all, even if I do it poorly.