On writing bad poetry...

The poem may well be the antithesis of the novel - succinct. And so, after conferring with my cohorts, we will write bad poetry. Little dollops of poetry, like sherbert to cleanse the pallete after a heavy meal of character development and atmosphere creation. If you feel compelled to write love sonnets, well, I'll not stop you, especially if they're written to me and they describe my roguish stare and my glistening lips. I'd like that. If you prefer to write one long epic poem, that's fine, as long as you add a little each day, and, in particular, if it's a long epic poem in honor of me and my wind-swept tresses and glinting eye, then I'll have no complaint at all. Write haiku. Or write limmericks. I couldn't care less. But write poems.

Jack is still fumbling through his novel. Tsk, tsk. But at least he's not abandoned his labor of love. So I won't put the added pressure of writing bad poetry on him just yet. He says that if we wait until May 1st, he'll be ready to write. How does that sound to you, Natalie? Everyone else who might be reading this and thinking that they have a few dipodic verses into which they could dip? Let me know. In the meantime, Jack says that we should write here each day just to keep the weblog up. I don't know what to write, as I'm done complaining about my novel and I have no bad poetry about which to begin complaining. I'll figure something out, I'm sure.

Maybe I'll toss out some of my truly atrocious poetry from my angst-ridden teen years. That should make you all sufficiently nauseous and depressed - an excellent combination of emotions to rely on when you go to write bad poetry of your own. Normally, I would keep them under wraps, hidden in some drawer at my mom's house. She won't part with them, despite any attempts I might make to persuade her to do so. You know how mothers are. They go to their graves believing that their dunderhead, knuckle-dragging curtain-climbers are the next Poes or Kennedys or Kings. So they keep all of that horrible ilk to prove how bright you were when you were 16. They just won't face the fact that the poetry is bad. Because you wrote it, you cute little babydoll.