The Education of J.H.S.

I have all these thoughts in my head, and I was trying to focus on one topic, but it didn't work so I'm just gonna make a huge list and be very vague. Hah.

1.) I'm trying to read all the books of poetry I have, because I haven't been making time to do so. First up: "The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke" trans. Stephen Mitchell. I don't like Shakespeare of Keats or Donne or any of those people. I don't know how to read this stuff. I realize Rilke is different but he is considered a master and a poet known by name alone.

2.) I wonder about poem endings. Sometimes they seem really sentimental. Or like the entire poem depends on the last line.

3.) Maybe I don't really care about a poem's content. I think I'm more concerned with the objects and settings that appear in poems. If a poem has Diet Coke, I'm lost. Though D.A. Powell does make pop culture references, his poems still seem graceful, while others just seem like they are being hipsters.

4.) I haven't finished a new poem in a long time. This scares me. I need to be writing.

5.) I would like to start developing poems in a three or four kinds of shapes. I find that books of poems that have interesting shapes, but the shapes reoccur look really good. They just seem cohesive. And I don't want my poems to be all the same usual shape everyone is used to seeing.

6.) I feel like I disagree with a lot of people about poetry. It's role. How to read it out loud. How to write it. It's meaning. And I would like to have poetry friends, I really would, but I have found no one that even comes close to my thinking on poetry. And I'm not sure I'm willing to compromise. I believe in what I'm doing, I think, but I wish everyone else did too (not that no one does, just not everyone does).

7.) I would love to be in some kind of artistic environment where I could learn. Or share ideas. Anything?