poets.com - piss on you

I wanted to find a place to post my poems where other people, who are poetically inclined, might read and comment on them. I posted one on www.poetry.com, and started receiving an incessant stream of e-mails and postal envelopes lauding me with "awards" which I had to purchase, and "published work" which I had to buy. I was born at night, but not last night. So, I din't post any more poems there.

So then I found www.poets.com. I thought, woohoo, a place where poets are required to post reviews so they can post more poems to be reviewed by others, seems like a great place for me to get some honest feedback on my writing (none of that "YOU ROCK" / "YOU SUCK" stuff that I detest mroe than cat vomit on my bed), but real writers reviewing my stuff! Sweet! And it only cost me $15 for 3 months - OK, I'll try it.

Now, I don't think I'm a great poet, I think I have a knack for getting my thoughts out through moderately good syntax, pretty good language, and fairly good analogy and slightly better metaphor - I can make something sound good, if not always mean exactly what I want it to - I do think in poetry, odd, but true - I also enjoy the process of puzzling the right word into the right spot, so as to deliver an entire psychic package of image and emotion and meaning, squished into a nice tight bundle.

So, I posted 11 poems over the last 7 or weeks. Some of my favorites, and a couple that I put together recently - a bone deep thank you to My Muse! 11 poems that I care about, and there were reviews, good ones, out of a possible 200 points (40 reviews * max 5 points each) I scored 191 points, and the language that was used to describe the impact of my poems made me feel kind of squishy inside - it was beautiful.

I don't get all ego-fruck about my wiritng. I know I'm competent, but I also know that opinion is fickle, and pretty much meaninless when it comes down to working on something new - I could accidentally write a great poem, or blog entry, and spend the rest of my life trying to compete with myself to exceed my maximum ability, a futile scenario, at best. I'm sure Hemmingway would have nodded in agreement before wandering out to blow his brains out.

So, I'm not really concerned, but I feel good that people are noticing my work - something that most of my family, and some of my friends have put up with, or pretended to. I mean, I know who loves me, and tells me the truth - or even sees the truth in what I write, I also know the slack-faced look and the "Yeah, that's really good... ... ... ..." response that really means, "How come you use all those words?" No biggie.

Tonight, I found out it was a lie - the common practice at poets.com is to cut & paste reviews on to as many poems as possible, so as to earn perqs from the site - $25 per day if you post the most reviews - and I am a sucker.

piss on poets.com, and all the commercialized poetry sites out there - I'll let this shit moulder on my blog, whether anyone reads it or not. And, if people come here, read it, and like it, then maybe they'll be a little happier - hey, this lesson only cost me $15 and a small chunk of pride, which I don't really need anyway. Definitely a good lesson in doing something I love to find out how much others love it - I'll just do what I love, and the rest of the world can go piss up a rope if they don't like it.