(Entirely Subjective) Rules for Poetry

or: what i have learned in seven years of writing poetry for internet blog & attempting submissions

1. Editing, after the fact, breaks the poem. The poem must be written in one fast rush of emotion. There may be stopping and starting within this rush. The rush may take three minutes or ninety minutes. Once the poem is saved as draft and returned to, it is broken. I cannot get inside the feeling twice.
   
2. Since no poem can be understood or written twice, the poem is as it turns out. This means that, upon being reread later, many poems that felt good in the moment of writing will turn out to be bad. This is a byproduct of the method and is acceptable. Many bad poems will be written and the more that are written, the higher chance that a good poem will come.
   
3. Even though there is no editing after the fact, there is only judgement of quality after the fact. Immediately after writing, I judge: did this poem successfully capture how I feel — and if so, it is a success in the moment. Days or weeks later, I will reread, and this will determine if the poem is a true success or merely a momentary successful externalization of emotion.
   
4. Poetry is weakened by being treated as a diary (sentiment) instead of as a purer art form (something which possesses meaning unto itself). By this I do not mean to disparage confessional writing or similar types of poetry (that is quite literally all I write!), but instead to condemn an intentional “de-facing” of the poem by the author: i.e., when aspects of the poem are included which have nothing to do with the poem itself, which may even break the poem, but which are included as a “self-reference” and are only intelligible to the author. I do this often (arguably, always) — this is a weakness on my part. I do still hold that if the poetry-as-diary is effective as emotional regulation, it is worth something in the moment; expectations for these types of poems, however, will be reasonably adjusted relative to their Effectiveness vs. Emotionality.
   
5. Submitting poetry will break your access to the rush necessary to write, as the process will become overly intellectualized. Submitting poetry, however, is necessary to development and necessary to a true understanding of the “quality” of the work, hence a slow-down in production of poems must be accepted as a necessary trade-off for periods of submission.
   
6. The more I write, I will improve. No new idea here, of course, but it always feels revolutionary to see this in action.
   
7. The space in which I write the poem will entirely determine its form. This includes, of course, handwritten versus typed poems, but also poems typed in WordPress versus a Google doc versus Substack. The format of the “draft” page on each application will inevitably force form.
   
8. The type of writing you are “meant” to do is the writing you do often and most naturally. I have aspirations of eventually returning to another first draft for a novel, but there is no regular impulse in me to write long-form fiction; the impulse must be forced. There is, however, a frequent interest in writing poetry and even in long periods where I do not write, I still have a sense that I could. This is the closest feeling possible to security in your writing.
   
9. I must read more poetry or I will be a dim and dull echo-chamber of myself!