When I retired, I thought most of my writing would focus on half-finished academic writing projects. To my surprise, much of what actually flowed from my brain was poetry or at least something poetry-adjacent. At first I thought this was mainly like journaling or brainstorming. Then, sometimes, I wondered if it might be more than that.
This piece called "Introductions"--published today as the first post in a thread for which this post is another introduction-- clarifies the dynamic. As the piece freely admits, I'm not sure if it is really even poetry, nor if anyone will respond to it.
Whatever it is, it articulates things I wanted to say and some people have seemed to like it.
Years ago in college, I wrote poetry, almost all of it bad. Then I stopped for decades. The only poetry-like compositions I've written that I feel fully confident standing behind are my better song lyrics. There I agree with Bob Dylan. There is a big difference between lyrics, which stand or fall fused with the music, and poems which are a separate animal.
I honestly don't know if I stand behind these as "published poet" (at least aspiring and self-published). As the "introductions" poem also... well, introduces... I'm not at all sure whether years of scholarly work destroyed my poet's voice. Nor am I even sure that I want to be a "poet" since quite often I don't like what passes for published poems. By extension I don't read enough of them to be in a fully-sustained dialogue with them. If I said something like that about song lyrics it would strike me as a completely different case and highly damning.
Still, I'm happy enough with some of these pieces to share them in this thread. I'm not sure what it will amount to; it is especially experimental even by the standards of a blog that is already experimental. Please me know what you think. If you hate them, please don't let it color your impressions of my essays and song lyrics too much!