Dirty Tricks

My recent post on "Bitter Enders" received a nice response. Thanks to everyone who read the post and replied to me about it. Your comments and ideas are deeply appreciated! It's a privilege and a pleasure to share thoughts with each and every one of you!

Never be shy about reaching out to me to talk poetry!  Just my email or contact me through Facebook.

One of the most powerful insights on the topic of emotional well-being came from poet Cindy Creel, who wasn't actually responding to my blog post, but to a poem I posted. She wrote: "describing the way something made you feel is a place of strength." 

Words to live by!

This is another way of saying: poems heal. Reading a poem, writing a poem, dreaming a poem. In each and every case, poems provide inspiration and -- often -- hope. People have written poems in concentration camps, mental wards, country jails, deserts, and on rafts lost as sea. It's natural to go through bouts of bitterness, alienation, doubt, and envy in your life as  poet, but don't let these emotions define you or your experience with art.

Poems, offered by anyone, at any time, are  acts of love. Or should be.  Even when poets write with deep anger and bitterness like Rimbaud or Plath's -- poetry, at its most destructive -- remains an act of creation.

Poets grow things like ideas, moods, spirits, themes and, sometimes, myths.  

Cindy also notes the deep relationship between physical well-being and emotional well-being, starting right from the earth up. You need to literally get your hands dirty. Soil contains minerals that are essential to your mental and physical well-being.

I overlooked these priceless insights in my original post. 

So let's state it clearly now:

You need to eat right, you need to get outside, and you need to put your hands in the dirt. So hike, bike, garden, jog, or just sit on a  blanket under the stars. Take a sip of puddle water off your fingertips, touch a spiderweb, eat a blade of grass. Rub some dirt on your face. Suck a pebble. Inhale the reviving scent of the earth.

Keep yourself, healthy, sane, and inspired so you can joyfully share your creative works with all of us for many years to come!

Tally
Poems Written: 313
Submissions: 51
Rejections:  21 (13 tiered)  
Acceptances: 0
Poem written today: "n/a"  Mixing song "Global Rain"


If you need a hand revising and polishing: 
1) Have me do it for you! Click the "Poem Polisher" button below. I've helped lots of poets.
2) Use my 7 Secrets of Poetry pdf as a guide for revision.

poem polisher

7 secrets of poetry