writing about poetry

April 28, 2025

/ HJ / Leave a comment

i don’t actually know what it means
to be
a great writer
a great poet

i’m just sitting here
at my messy dinner table
early in the morning
writing whatever comes to mind
as a way to encourage myself
to deal with the day
that is coming towards me
at breakneck speed

maybe,
when you’re in your ‘fighting a [seemingly] losing war
against fascism with the best tool you have —
kindness’ era
you’ll understand

~~~

i feel like this kind of morning
and this kind of writing
is the reason i started this challenge to begin with

i feel more awake
more aware
more ready to start my day

though i still need to edit and pick and send in the audition
i feel so much more prepared for it
now

~~~

“you look like such a writer!”
of my big sweater
comfy tee
glasses
bun
and coffee in hand

and i do, don’t i?
i do…

March 25, 2025

/ HJ / Leave a comment

in photography, i have no problem
taking tens
of hundreds
of thousands of photos
knowing that somewhere in there,
there will be a great picture —
gorgeous
experimental
framed well
captured beautifully
and composition, exquisite

and even in poetry, mornings of multitudes,
all my poems
multiple
every morning, i know
not every poem will be great
but somewhere in here
there may be something
to write home about

then why oh why do i shy away from
the writing of prose/novels/
or plays?

as if i need my first try to be
so great
otherwise i should just
give
up

?

is it simply that it takes so much longer to write
longer form, than it does to slap dash down a poem
or capture a second or few
in a non-moving image?

so the effort to output
ratio feels more
[risky]

[or am i so scared of something more/or less scary?]

March 10, 2025

/ HJ / Leave a comment

i wish i saw through poet’s eyes
the beauty of the earth at all times —
but instead i see the pain and despair
and try to beautify that
with impassioned speeches/
or try to find the tiniest spec
of lovely
in a day full of pain/
and make the mundane
beautiful again

though it doesn’t really feel like
poetry
to me
without grand sunsets
or allegories of bees and flowers,

i’m over here trying —
making beauty out of angst
and bubble gum

January 21, 2025

/ HJ / Leave a comment

just write through
the pain and
the loss and
the lost feelings and
the sleepiness and
the exhaustion and
the boredom and
the mundanity and
the distractions and
the battles and
the fight and
when the fight leaves us
for an hour or a day or a year
or so
we can write ourselves
back into the fight
if it means enough to us

[and yes, it means enough
to me]

August 16, 2024

/ HJ / Leave a comment

pretend
for a moment
you don’t know where you came from
or to what you’re going
or even any established rules
about your own identity
or the world at large and little
and you go to craft a poem —
would you know what words to use
would you innately be aware of rules and parameters
poetry has to work around and within
or would you just write what was in your soul
even if the words in your soul had no words at all?

and would that still be poetry?

[i think so]

February 5, 2024

/ HJ / Leave a comment

the simplicity today
is still so simple

it’s not making larger ideas
blossom
in front of my eyes/
it’s making my blood boil and rise
at the fact that i
cannot seem to focus long enough
to make poetry i’m proud of

maybe tomorrow
[maybe even later today]

February 4, 2024

/ HJ / Leave a comment

do past poets
ever view todays’
as cheaters?

“i never had rhyming dictionaries
back in my day…”

“the whole of human knowledge
at your fingertips
and this drivel
is what you come up with???”

good thing
i don’t believe in an afterlife

otherwise
i’d be worried
about generations of past poets behind me
judging my work
instead of simply all of humanity
from now going forward…

January 20, 2024

/ HJ / Leave a comment

interpretation
is 90%
of the poetry game

maybe that’s why i write so bluntly
so obviously
sans metaphor
sans simile
so the interpretation can be
exactly what it was meant to be

[or is this just another example
of me trying to hold on to control
of a thing i really can’t control at all?]