I guess technically I started this morning with How to be a Fool. The experiment is to write a poem every day until New Years. Kind of a NaPoWriMo thing. I think they will probably be short and edited as I go. I have already made a couple of changes to the first one. I don’t use any set style as you can see from my previous work. I do silly poems and sappy poems, non-rhyming and not so much rappy poems.

Poems are like my mind doodling with words and made into something living with a framework of rhythm and form. Sometimes the words need a little crunching and digesting and spitting back out, but I have no formal editing process. I work on it until it seems good and then leave it for a while. I always notice things that bother me later. But I think most of the poem is right the first time it comes out or it is never quite right.

I write them for me, and I don’t mind other people reading them. For me it is the process not the product that counts with poetry. I have noticed though my best poems come when the process is feels smooth and in the end I am laughing or crying or taking a deep breath of wonder. I only get rid of the ones I can’t feel.