Okay, so let's start with a couple of acknowledgements.
One: I spend too much time reading The New York Times.
Two: this story in today's Times, isn't about writing poetry.
As for the first, let me at least argue that I also read the Los Angeles Times about as often (I subscribe to both online), and every so often take a look at The Washington Post and the Christian Science Monitor, as well as the home page for API. They're all favorited on my laptop or my smartphone. I remember reading that John Kennedy read these particular papers every day of his too-short presidency, as well as the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch, the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe, and the Atlanta Constitution-Journal, ostensibly to get a picture of what America was thinking and feeling. Either he skimmed headlines, like I sometimes do, or he read fast, or he spent the greater part of his presidency reading the newspaper. (Some former presidents can't read, I understand.) And in my defense, no daily covers the arts, literature and writing especially, quite as thoroughly as the NYT.
And now for the second acknowledgement. This is what we try to do every week at Wednesdays@One. Not only do we read our poems aloud, but someone else in the group reads our poems back to us, aloud, so we can hear ourselves through other voices. Often, we discover what the writers featured in the Times story say they uncover in their own drafts: dropped articles, misplaced modifiers, clichés, logic gone awry, wonky rhythms, convoluted statements, and so on.
Not everybody always accepts (or wants to accept) the gaps and rough spots in the drafts they bring to the salon for reading. Sometimes we just want some confirmation that we got it right and that the poem sounds to others as it sounds to us inside our heads. And sometimes we get it. The confirmation, that is. And sometimes we don't get it. The actionable insight.
But there's nothing quite like hearing your own construction read back to you, out loud, for helping you hear more effectively the music you're trying to make. So I hope this reading aloud keeps us moving forward, toward that better writer tomorrow than we are today.
Anyway, another year almost written down in lines and metaphors. Great job, everybody, and a very merry holiday to you all!
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