What Kind Of Poetry Do I Like To Write?

A little over a week ago I joined All Poetry (AP) the world's largest on-line poetry site and have been churning out poems left and right ever since. Each time you submit a poem you have to write a nice comment about the work of two other poets published there and that has been fun as well.

I found this site after getting rejections on a few poems submitted to a Christian poetry site joined in February. One of my submissions was the bronze winner for the month of February and one won the gold for the month of March but they only seem to like a very narrow range of poetic expression.

As explained in their page on submission requirements, true Christian poetry should rhyme, have good cadence and meter, not go in and out of rhyme, and be "reader oriented" as opposed to "writer oriented". Evidently those who chose to "read" poetry at this site are heavily left brained and don't want to be challenged by messy stuff that fires off multiple right brain syntaxes.

The first time a poem of mine was rejected, a very nice selection called SHOE BOX expressing my emotions about praying for unsaved family members, the reason given was "check submission requirements". Doing so and not getting any greater clarity I rewrote the poem, explaining in the poem all the imagery, such as what the shoe box was, called it SHOE BOX II and submitted. I thought the effort was dreadful but it was accepted right away. Ha!

Perhaps one should not bite the hand that feeds it (i.e. they really like some of my stuff and they have every right to determine what they will publish). But then I came across a prompt from the AP site which is the title of this poem, and I couldn't help myself.


What Kind Of Poetry Do I Like To Write?

A while back I found a site
that asked for Christian poems
they had to rhyme
like all the time
and fit the proper zones
this I could do
till I was blue
but found it's not enough
to have good meter, cadence too
just not that other stuff
like imagery and metaphors
and heaven's no emotion
i would submit a little bit
which caused a great commotion
some they would post
and I would boast
of winning a nice prize
though some would sink
when it made them think
which opened up my eyes
a greeting card is really nice
one knows what to expect
but twiggy waters was too much
it earned a quick reject
so here I am an AP man
free verse, humor and rhyme
still talk about my dear sweet Lord
sometimes a bit sublime