About My Poetry Site
My ex-wife, Wolfmoon, was the first person to suggest that I try to write. At the time, we were just friends and she had shared some of her poetry with me. I had just broken up with my male fiancé and she suggested that it was a way to lessen my pain, to help me mend my broken heart. And it did. By putting the pain down on paper, I stopped carrying so much of it around with me all the time.
Since then, I have never had any formal training on how to write poetry. When I first started writing, I thought about taking a poetry writing class, but I was always put off by the idea of having to write on demand. It's something I'm not sure I could do: write simply for the sake of writing, and then have someone else criticize my work.
In high school, I read poetry published by famous authors, but I was never able to really connect with their words. The subjects of the poems never seemed to interest me and they always seemed too flowery. Words seemed to be chosen more for their sound quality, so they rhymed a particular way, rather than their meaning, and most of the time I felt like the meaning was completely lost when I was forced to look up a word because I'd never seen it before.
So, you'll never see me using fifty-cent words that you'll need a dictionary to understand. My words come from my heart. You won't come away from reading my work thinking, "What the hell was she talking about?" I write when I am moved to write, when the words burn at my insides to come out. I write to say things that I have trouble saying otherwise.
The author's notes, on the other hand, were Kodi's idea. Back when we were originally creating my Web site and reading through all my old poems, Kodi was constantly asking me to tell her the backstory behind them. I didn't really mind telling her about all those stories. I figured it was just a way for her to get to know my history and me as well. Kodi thought that the stories were just as interesting as the poems were, and suggested that the reading public would probably like to hear those stories also, since they put the poems into context. So, my author's notes were born.
Over time, my opinion of the author's notes has changed. At first, I saw them as something I did for the public, but now I write them for myself. I've come to view the author's notes as a sort of therapy session for me, where I can take a look at some difficult subjects and try to figure out the real meanings or emotions behind the words of the poem. But in order for me to explain the emotion behind a poem, I first must understand it, and depending on the emotional intensity of the poem, I may not be ready to take a closer look at those feelings immediately, so sometimes I'll wait and give the poem some distance until I'm ready to deal with the emotions. Then, once I've written the author's notes and am happy with them, I post the poems and update my site. It's just one more way for me to deal with some hard issues and try to help myself heal from them. I've found writing the author's notes to be very helpful in that respect.
I've also found my author's notes, as well as the poems they're about, to be very useful as a historical reference. When I'm trying to remember when something happened or what else might have been going on at a certain time in my life, all I have to do is start going through my site and I usually find the information.
In other words, this site has come to mean more to me than just a collection of my poems. At this point, I think of this site as my memoirs.
Well, I hope you enjoy reading my poems and author's notes as much as I've enjoyed writing them.