by
Gordon Stamper, Jr.
During this
National Poetry Month, I thought about some of my favorite poems. One of them is Auden’s “Musee des Beaux Arts,”
impressions and inspirations the poet had after viewing The Fall of Icarus by Pieter Brueghel. It is partly a profound meditation on how life
goes on, even after the events that are of the greatest personal importance to
us.
In the
concluding stanza, Auden reflects on the ploughman who may have heard and seen
Icarus’ fall: “. . .the ploughman
may/Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,/But for him it was not an
important failure.”
As a poet,
you may write something that is extremely significant for you, but unfortunately
very few others ever read. Many poets
are guilty of the same thing: they don’t
read other poems, especially those of contemporary poets, their peers, or don’t
make much of an effort to do so.
If you’re
guilty of this, your practical and selfish concern is that if you want to be
published (and not only self-published), you should read the poetry of the
markets where you send it. When I was a
staff editor for a literary magazine, I saw how many people missed the mark
when it came to submissions. For poetry,
we received poems with forced rhymes and sing-song rhythm for a publication
that generally published cutting edge and mostly free, unrhymed verse. So please, read your intended markets!
Another more
altruistic and intrinsic reason for reading poetry is to soak in poets’
artistry and insights, and then share them with others. Appreciate the effort of crafting the phrase,
layering their messages, using powerful imagery to impress their words into
your psyche.
Poets,
please keep flying, and also appreciate the efforts of the fellow flyers around
you.
__________
Gordon Stamper, Jr. is a poet, co-moderator of Highland Writers Group, and a founding member
of Indiana Writers’ Consortium. He
currently teaches English composition and research writing at Ivy Tech
Community College and Purdue University Northwest.
__________
The picture at
the head of this post shows The Fall of
Icarus, a 1500’s painting attributed
to Pieter Brueghel. The picture is in the public domain because of its age.
No comments:
Post a Comment