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Jan 28, 2023Liked by Radha Marcum

A sequence of similar-sounding or -looking poems might be just the same poem written multiple times or perhaps what should be sections of a single, longer poem. I sometimes see this in chapbooks written to a theme, perhaps one of the reasons I often find chapbooks tedious.

An outlier might very well represent a successful breaking out of a rut and should probably be analyzed with that possibility in mind. I stopped submitting poems several years ago, but looking back the ones that are almost nonce poems seem to me now some of the more interesting and not just, Oh, great, another poem like -blank-.

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Thanks, Radha. I needed to read this today! One of my poems, in free verse, has 63 lines with no punctuation and lots of white space--not my usual style at all. I needed 45 years to be ready to write it but have no idea what, if anything, to do with it.

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Thanks Radha. I have a few "outliers", mostly older work that defies further revision yet doesn't seem to talk nicely with current poems. I'll take a closer look as you suggest--maybe there is a link I just haven't seen. Variation is the spice of poetry, a truth I know you encourage.

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