It all sounds so easy. Write poetry. Organize your poetry into book format. Submit chapbook. Profit! Well, maybe not the last one. We all know how much poetry pays. Sometimes it’s tempting to fold poems into paper airplanes and send them out into the world. I favor the “tie a poem to a balloon and send it aloft” method, but that’s bad for the environment. So, what to do with all those poems? First, print…
One thing we see a lot of here at Gyroscope Review is a good poem—that suddenly goes wrong. In their haste to put a tidy bow at the end of the poem, the poet wraps it up with a cliché. Instead of ending strong and leaving the reader to marvel at the deft wording, the poet tries to evoke the emotion they want us to feel with a stock image/phrase. It doesn’t work. The reader…
Although I’ve been writing poetry as best I can of late, I felt my output wasn’t where it should be. The state of the world had me flummoxed. My poems were scattered in theme and many felt unfinished even when completed— a sort of bookish throat-clearing that happens periodically as I flail about, searching. I needed to move out of the ‘any half-assed written down poem is a good thing’ mentality. As a way of…
Do you prefer to read your poetry on the page, or listen to it? (Or watch and listen to it?) Which are you more comfortable with? As a poet, do you write your poem to be read on the page or performed? Give a listen to the YouTube poem readings below and consider how each makes you feel. Is it that the poet is engaging, or is it the words that grab you? Do you…
