Where Our Validation Comes From
These words of wisdom from Bob Haynes, the teacher in our on-line course through Writers on the Net about how poetry works.
"A student in a class from a few years ago kept wanting to know what she needed to write decent poetry. I kept telling her that she needed a clean, healthy mind, and that I recommend she steer clear of prurient topics like sex and violence. Well, she was even confused by my comments until she finally told me that what she meant by "decent" was publishable. It seemed to me that these were two distinctly different questions.
Maybe in the beginning, publishing is an exciting event. But after you've had a few hundred poems published, the excitement turns to disma. The editor takes the poem you inserted as filler to the submission rather than the important work you wanted the editor to notice. Publishing is seldom a validation. Editorial choices are a lot different than artistic choices. I believe validation can't really come from outside the poem."
