Answer to comments

I still have not figured out how to comment on comments and how to let everyone see the reader's comments but H is coming next week to teach me. Julie asked about dashes and commas and their use in poems. I consider the white page a canvas and may do whatever I want to "paint my picture" and either make it work for myself or my audience or both. My goal is for my audience to enjoy the "poem experience" the words and their meanings create. Look at e. e. cummings. Many of his poems are wonderful, some however, are too jumbled to immediately understand. Julie also asked, CAN ANYONE BE A POET? I cannot answer that. BUT, anyone who can speak can write, at least write down what they would speak. And with some work, anyone can write a loving "message," maybe not a "poem" to a loved one, but heartfelt. And once that communication begins, and diligent observation of the exterior world and the internal knowledge and feelings of that, persists in being expressed in words -- poems can arrive through that birth canal and burst into air and with a gulp and cry, a whisper and shudder, grow towards poetry.