Poetry Philosophy and The Gunpowder Review

I've been writing poetry almost as long as I've been writing fiction - I probably started when my age was in the single digits.  I really enjoy the brevity of the form, although not all poems are brief - what I mean is that so much can be said in so few words.  It's like code or shorthand - part of the fun is in figuring out as many pieces of the puzzle as you can.  In addition to this, poems are meant to be enjoyed out loud, and some of the poems I enjoy the most are ones that sing from the pages.  The poems that make you want to get up and dance, like those of Maya Angelou and Langston Hughes, Robert Frost and Margaret Atwood.  These poems are full of celebration and anger, emotional as a brutal slap in the face of life.  They want you to WAKE UP.

Then there are the quiet ones, the ones that are said into the silence of thought and leave echoes.  These are the ones which come back days, weeks, months, years later, creeping up on you at the most unexpected times and telling you something new about the world around you.  Sometimes intellectual, sometimes obscure, these are the ghosts, the quiet whispers at the edges of your mind.

Just my own personal philosophy about poetry and why I enjoy it so much, both in reading and writing.  I felt a bit introspective, since I have a new poem that just came out in The Gunpowder Review called "Sun-Death."   The Gunpowder Review is a beautiful journal edited by Vonnie Winslow Crist, with the goal to, "publish the creative work of women writers, artists and photographers," based in Maryland.  It is filled the unexpected gems from a number of very creative women - in fact, too many to list, so I hope you check it out!