allpoetry

So today I did something that I've been thinking about for a while now: I removed all my poems from allpoetry. All 776 of them. I remember wanting when I was younger to be one of those people with 1000 or 2000 poems posted on there, but really, what does the number matter?

I didn't delete them for real, of course; I have them saved off on my computer. I just think I've moved beyond that site, and I didn't want to leave them up there, obligating me to return. I left my account up though, so I can go back and start writing there again if I feel like doping so in the future. But I think I've moved past it; I no longer have a deep-seated need for people to see and like my work. At the moment, I'm feeling much more like an Emily Dickinson: keep it all in a storage trunk, and some crazy relative can edit it to make it more PC and publish it when I'm dead.

Was it the best idea to do this on a down day? Probably not. But manic me didn't have the balls to do it, and I think it needed to be done. It's strange: for so long my allpoetry was my webpage, where I directed anyone who wanted to know more about me. But now, I've lost the need for it. I write in notebooks and on scraps of paper, and occasionally post things to my private journal. This feels to me like a big part of growing up and setting aside my emo teenage past, and really defining what poetry is to me: a way to make people like me and garner compliments; a cool dramatic thing to affix next to my name, like dreamer; or an inherent part of who I am--the burning need to put words on the page.


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Listening to: Exile by Enya, my old friend in times like these.

Blanket and numerous poems!

I finished the blanket yesterday! Hurray! I'll post pictures later, but I really am impressed. It took a long long time, but it's so warm and cuddly and pretty. It's officially the biggest and most complicated thing I've ever crocheted, so that's exciting too.

Anyway. . . not much else has happened since I posted last. Same lying about the house, crocheting or writing and watching Stargate (blew through seasons 9 and 10 and both new movies in just a few days). Oh, but I figured out that on allpoetry I posted 196 poems in 2007 and 196 poems in 2008. Weird! That's out of a total of 468, five of which are this year, so although I've been on it since my sophomore year of high school (2004), I really wasn't active until the latter part of my senior year. Interesting and useless data there. :)

I know I say this every few months or so, but I'm becoming really comfortable with where I am in my poetry. I can pull pretty interesting lines and ideas just straight off the top of my head, and form some good poems (if I do say so myself) rather quickly. And I like my poems, so that's really all that matters (though it is nice to get appreciation and praise :).

And I've decided this year that I'm going to do the project 365 thing, which is to take a picture every day for a year. My first picture was of the blanket I just finished yesterday. Today I think it's a picture of my cat with my ps2 controller. Not that inspiring or marvelous. . . I'm sure I'll get better at it as the year goes on. I'll be posting the pictures eventually in a separate blog in this account.

The other blog is My eyes of 2009.

Random and rambling as always.

Contest poetry

I feel better now after logging in and having seven messages and 35 notes. Lots of people appreciated my comments (even if allpoetry didn't *pout* :), and many commented on my poems as well.

The real reason I'm posting is for another interesting phenomenon of mine. It seems that most times I find a cool contest and enter a poem I really like, it gets an honorable mention or (more often) nothing. But whenever I kind of halfheartedly enter something just to enter it, it will do well.

Yesterday I entered this contest with a really cool picture, but I just wasn't doing that great on the inspiration, and kind of cranked out what I saw as an unoriginal and boring poem. I sighed, but entered it anyway, thinking I might as well try. And I got silver. :P I've decided the universe likes to torment me. . . .