Compression, or concision, of thought, and connoisseurship of language is what poetry means to me. A onetime salesman, I took a crack at reciting my own verse some years ago. I flopped, but it’s good brain training. I learned to edit maybe twenty or thirty times for a good delivery and for appearance on the page.
I met good people, most of them way out of my comfort zone. One of them was a guy who, I guess, has been living the local version of the literary life. Publisher of quirky literary works of local interest, second-hand book seller, poetry promoter, occasional teacher/adjunct, printer, resident of a busted-up building in our mostly abandoned downtown. It’s hard for me not to admire someone who seems to have thumbed his nose at worldliness.
February 27th, 2016 at 9:08AM
Compression, or concision, of thought, and connoisseurship of language is what poetry means to me. A onetime salesman, I took a crack at reciting my own verse some years ago. I flopped, but it’s good brain training. I learned to edit maybe twenty or thirty times for a good delivery and for appearance on the page.
February 28th, 2016 at 11:24AM
Jack/OH: Compression + language connoisseurship is a good rough definition of poetry I think.
February 29th, 2016 at 8:26PM
I met good people, most of them way out of my comfort zone. One of them was a guy who, I guess, has been living the local version of the literary life. Publisher of quirky literary works of local interest, second-hand book seller, poetry promoter, occasional teacher/adjunct, printer, resident of a busted-up building in our mostly abandoned downtown. It’s hard for me not to admire someone who seems to have thumbed his nose at worldliness.