Thread:Merrimack/@comment-31019144-20170615050104/@comment-32738051-20170618145000

Aww, that is sweet of you to say, Maguti! And you're very welcome for the comments on your poem. I had an "aww" moment reading about how you sang and played your poem to your daughter...so sweet! 😍

I guess my opinion of my poems is probably colored both by being the author and by knowing the rest of my poetry. I too am a sentimental old bone...you should see some of my early work, back when I was way too young and had far less experience. Some of it was really mushy and silly and not very good...more than sentimental, it was the dribble of a student playing with form more than content and meaning. Needless to say, I won't be sharing those. Someday, I may go back to some of them and re-work them, make them better.

That first poem on my blog, the inspiration for it was the song "Comfortably Numb" by Pink Floyd. It sounds like I had a drug induced moment or something but it wasn't any real experience of my own. A lot of my poetry is like that, inspired by others' works I've read or music I've heard or TV or movies I've seen, rather than on any experience of my own. But there are a few, like the second poem, that were inspired by personal experience. In the case of that poem, it wasn't a breakup but rather someone I was very interested in who didn't feel the same way in return...I re-worked the experience and my feelings to write the poem. Funny, I've never really had an actual breakup quite like the one in the poem. Go figure. 😉

Just goes to show the sources for one's inspiration and one's writings can literally come from anywhere and anyone and any time. I had one poem based on an historical event, another that drew inspiration from Looney Tunes, another inspired by Desert Storm and the Gulf War, another that used terms from my sewing hobby to allude to human experience, one that drew from a moment I had writer's block (and a great way to end that mental block too!), and the list goes on. Whatever tickled my muse to inspire in me at that moment. It also helps to have a rhyming dictionary and a thesaurus handy, whether online or electronically offline or a physical book. I have books and use the internet myself. Sometimes, I think I have seen things through eyes older than my own, drawing on what I've learned from the works of others older and wiser and more experienced than myself. I imagine you've had similar experiences with your own writings. In any case, some of the greatest poets have been silly or sentimental and there is nothing wrong with that. In fact, I've always believed poetry should be very expressive and at least a little sentimental...the best poetry really should solicit an emotional response.

Even if that response is a groan...my Looney Tunes inspired poem is like that. It's one of my favorites but probably also my silliest and has a punch line that makes people groan and shake their heads at me when I read it to them. It's probably also my funniest poem and my most theatrical.

Anyway, I have a few unpublished poems picked out to share and the best way for you to give me your email address is if I give you mine and you send me an email first. If you want to do it that way, click [mailto:merrimacga@yahoo.com here] to send me an email. If the link doesn't work, scroll over it and you should be able to see the address. Worst case scenario, I can just type it out for you. Or, if you're comfortable with it and would prefer, you can post your email address in a reply here and I'll email you first.

I really hope I'm not the only one sharing poetry with you. I imagine at least a few other wiki members are also poets. The more the merrier I say...we poets need to share our work with others. It's great to write for one's self but even better when we share it. 👪