Poetry has been a love of mine since I was very young. I dabbled in it in High School, but I did not do any serious writing until after my daughter was born. I began taking a writing course via mail correspondence. Taking care of a baby and a house did not leave much time to study and write so I did not complete the course. It seemed there was never enough time to devote to seriously pursuing my writing. However, I did have surges of inspiration in which, sometimes I would write six or seven poems within a couple of hours. Often, I would revise these within the next few hours after writing them. Some poems did not seem to need much rewriting and editing them became a task I could do very quickly, too. Eventually, I typeset these into several volumes, though I did not publish the volumes. I did publish one or two via the internet, but did pursue this either because I did not have the time and money to devote to copyrighting everything and I had so much material saved up. More recently I found out about "Creative Commons," licensing and this provided an avenue for safe publishing without cost. It also consumed very little time. Much of my poetry is inspirational, though I have written poems on everyday subjects quite often.
I did have some minor successes with the few pieces of my writing I sent off when I was younger. One poem entitled, "Alas, My Beloved Son!" was accepted by the American Poetry Association for publication. However, for various reasons I did not get to send it back. It was the first piece of writing I ever attempted to submit for publication. Anytime an editor writes any notes in their own hand, even on a rejection slip, it means they are interested in your work and want to see more. I also did get a bit of critique and good feedback from publishers even though most of the few other works I sent were not accepted. I failed to check out the market for particular publishers and they would send a form letter rejection, stating it did not suit their particular needs. In college I got very good feedback from my instructors. One instructor published two of my poems in the college art and literary magazine. She later told me that various students had made good comments about my work and that my "experimental style" might make me famous one day (I'm not sure fame is such a good thing, another reason I like my pen name. In today's times though, with so much progress in media technology, it is not likely one can remain anonymous one their work becomes popular. Thus, the reason for confessing on my part). Other good comments came from a professor in a creative writer's group I and a friend helped to establish. The group was started before we joined but it was not formally organized or established with an other organization. We helped establish it with the local arts council, which provided a regular place to meet and other benefits. Still, other good feedback came from guests to my web sites. God really has blessed what little work I have been able to get exposed, thus far.
no
In the area of writing poetry and prose, I enjoyed Robert Frost. He used the simplest of words, yet his work was extremely popular. In fact, I think that is what gave him an edge. The average person could easily interpret his work and enjoy it. For me, it is much the same way. Though English was one of the subjects I excelled at and I had a vast vocabulary I did not want to use many large words in my writing, especially poetry. My feelings are that if we write and a large percent of people do not understand it -- then what have we actually accomplished -- and how many people have we actually reached with what is in our hearts?
These days I do most of my creative work on my Mac -- whether it is composing digital music, artwork, or poetry.