Why I don’t Write Poetry

 

I’m taking a short break today from the photo challenge to chat about something else.  Not taking a break from the challenge itself, mind you—the photo has been dutifully taken, posted, and pinned—just a break from blogging about it.  (At least for now; today’s entry will almost certainly wind up here some time soon.)

Anyway, today’s topic is about one of the other activities that has been occupying my mind lately, the Ultimate Blog Challenge.  Perhaps you noticed the widget over on the side in the past day or two?  Anyway, this particular challenge is all about consistent posting and increased readership.  The “rules” of the challenge, if you will, are pretty simple:  post daily during the month of July (technically, 31 posts; it’s a bit lax if you need to play catch-up and post more than once a day or something), and be part of the greater blogging community by reading/commenting on others’ blogs.  Like I said, simple.

The daily posting part I’ve been okay with for the past month or so, and the photo challenge has been really helpful with that, always giving me a starting point for ideas.  But while I’m not trying to rule the blog world or anything, it wouldn’t bother me at all to have a few more reader/commenters, so networking with like-minded folks seemed like a good idea.

So what, you are likely asking yourself by now, does any of this have to do with writing poetry?  Well, nothing, really.  But, one of the things that comes along with joining up with the UBC are some daily topic prompts, just in case you’re running dry at a particular moment in time.  Today, I decided to try one of the suggestions, and, well, “why I don’t write poetry” was the lucky one.

Sad to say that after all of this lengthy build up of how we got to where we are, the answer is really quite simple (simpler even than the UBC rules):  I don’t write poetry because I suck.  I’d give you an example, but, really, I suck.  So, instead, I’ll share with you the most recent poem that really resonated with me.  First, though, I should warn you that it came to me—multiple times—by way of Facebook.  That ought to tell you something right there. 

Ready?  Here we go:

 

 

 Image credit is hard with this sort of internet sensation, but I got it here.

But while it may be some sort of indictment of more than my poetry skills that I found that extremely funny, the other sad truth is that any poem I would try to compose would make this look like something from the Poet Laureate. 

I think it’s important that we can recognize our limitations along with our strengths.  I mean, I’m not claiming to be the next Great American Novelist, or anything, but I can string together words in a reasonable enough fashion to convey information, evoke emotion, or simply engage a reader in mindless conversation.  But poetry—from iambic pentameter to free verse and everything in between—eludes me.  Always has.  And, most likely, it always will.  I mean, I could devote some time to trying to learn how to put words together in that fashion, but why?  As we’ve seen, it doesn’t take great poetry to entertain me, so why not leave the whole thing to others who have more appreciation and respect for the genre?   I think that sounds like a perfectly fine idea.

So, to recap:

1. I’m participating in a daily blogging challenge
2. Poems are hard and I suck at writing them
3. Bacon

What about you? Where do you draw the line in your creative endeavors? And, by the way, what’s your stance on bacon?