I have to admit that I am a totally different poet than I expected I might be, and the differences between my verse and prose are almost in the territory of a multiple personality disorder.
While I start poems in a variety of ways, it seems four elements hold true:
1. The title is almost always something about the poem, but not of the poem, as in, I don't use lines from the poem itself.
2. The poem itself is usually pretty sparse. While I have always wanted to write Homer-esque epics, it seems I am a slave to a form that leaves much unsaid. This is odd, given my prosian (my word, deal with it) verbosity. I like to think of my poems as three legs of a triangle, with the poem and the title leading you to the unsaid portion, which may or may not be what I intended. Think of the poem as the frame, the title as the siding, and the balance as the insulation.
3. I seem caught in groups of four. Perhaps its my musical leanings, but I need to feel a certain rhythm in a poem, and that rhythm generally comes in quadrilles.
4. I am principally visually oriented, and I hope that comes through in the work. I am very much a frustrated painter-- frustrated in that it is what I would prefer to do, but I am completely inept at it. So I try to paint with my words, carefully choosing them to evoke a nuanced picture, and hopefully with it, a distinct mood, the better to fluff up that unseen insulation.
Well, now you know more than you either did or needed to...
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