An Immodest Poet (or, Confessions of an Ambiguous Teapot)

April 6, again

Man. I'm a good poet.

See, I'm going to hang out with Heather tomorrow, and we're going to read some poetry to one another (a fellow poet! hurray! at long last!). So tonight I printed out some poems, and even gave my rusty reading voice a run-through. Some of these poems I hadn't read in years; I just remembered being fond of them, once upon a time.

Some of them are very good. Like, I squint and go "Did I write this?" kind of good.

Some of them, of course, aren't so good, and I have intense fear that my newer poems are among the "not so good" variety, that I've lost my touch in recent months or years. I'm pleased with the stuff I've been writing lately... but it's all so new, I don't really have any perspective. I'm going to read Heather a couple of my newest pieces, and if she makes sour faces I'll have an indication that they aren't very good...

I've read a lot of stuff lately about writers and age (it seems to be popping up a lot lately; M'ris wrote about it recently, and I've seen the debate in some other places, too)-- the gist seems to be that some people believe you have to be over a certain age before you can write decent fiction. 35, say, or 40. I don't believe that; I've read some brilliant fiction by people younger than that, and I'm writing competent fiction at 24-- I doubt I'll need another 11 or 16 years to graduate from competent to "good." But anyway, my point (actually) is that this ageism doesn't seem to apply to poetry. Rimbaud did pretty much all his work before age 19. Langston Hughes wrote some of his masterpieces before he was 20. Many poets are like this, burning brightly in their youth, and gradually diminishing as they age.

That would be a bummer! I was a better poet at 18 and 19 than I was at 16 (or 7, when I published my first poem, if I remember rightly-- a piece called "Colors" in the Wayne Collection-- ironic subject matter, as I am color blind), but have I been declining in my powers ever since? I'd hate for the graph of my skills to form a parabola so soon! My critical faculties are certainly better now than they ever have been in the past; you'd think I could apply some of that perceptivity to my own work.

If my best years are behind me... Man. Bummer. I mean, I was pretty good, but I wasn't that good. Not good enough to rest on my laurels, anyway. I should at least publish a chapbook with a print run of 150 copies or so before I leave the field in disgust and retire. :)

But Karen directed people to my "God of the Crossroads" poem at Strange Horizons (thanks, Karen!), and it's really new, so maybe I haven't entirely lost my skills as my age advances.

Anyway, the upshot of this is that I intend to update my web site soon, with some more previously-published poems. I should put "Visions" and "Gallery" and "Crossing" and some other stuff up. Hell, maybe I'll dig up "Colors" for a laugh-- maybe Mom has a copy of it. I bet she could find my first published story, "A Day in the Life of a Spider," too. That came out when I was 8, I think, in the Superintendent's Choice Awards. Y'all are dying to read my juvenilia, I'm sure.

Well. Maybe there are some English majors lurking in the cyberbushes who really do want to see my juvenilia. Back, fiends!

I should also get back into submitting poetry. I don't think I have any poems submitted anywhere right now, which is totally lame and unacceptable and stupid, too. Consider me self-chastised. If I don't mention that I've submitted some poems in a week or so, y'all yell at me, all right? I can't go on like this.

After all, I'm not getting any younger.

I got a real bad feeling that a book of poems ain't enough.

-The Old 97's, from "Book of Poems"