Last month, I attended a poetry workshop. After most of the others there had shared their work, and had constructive feedback, I shared mine. I got told that I demonstrated “good use of language”, but that my offering was “not poetry”. The instructor didn’t explain what I was doing wrong, just that I was, definitively, wrong.<\/p>\n
That hurt, far more than it should. Some people are jerks, and I know that. But it really hurt to have my work shot down with no explanation.\u00a0When I saw this challenge, I knew that I had the perfect way to put that hurt behind me, and get back to writing.<\/p>\n
So here is my warm-up piece, a kidney punch to the ogre of insecurity. Warning: naked sarcasm ahead.<\/p>\n
The English is good, and the grammar correct, Last month, I attended a poetry workshop. After most of the others there had shared their work, and had constructive feedback, I shared mine. I got told that I demonstrated “good use of language”, but that my offering was “not poetry”. The instructor didn’t explain…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":316,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[317,314,315,316],"class_list":["post-5546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-introductions","tag-criticism","tag-rant","tag-sarcasm","tag-workshop"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/316"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5546"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5557,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5546\/revisions\/5557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nBut this is not poem.
\nThe rhythm is fine, and the stresses line up,
\nBut this is not a poem.
\nThe metaphor struggles on atrophied limbs,
\nThe rhyming is weak, and the words just don’t sing,
\nAnd it’s not the way I<\/em> would have written the thing;
\nNo, this is not a poem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"