Being True to My Voice

     I've written before about poetic "voice" and how I've had to find my own. I've only been sending my poems out for publication since the summer of 2008, but in that short time I've struggled much over the dilemma of giving editors what they want, giving different types of readers what they want, and writing the kind of poetry I want to write. It's easy enough to say you have to stay true to your voice and not care about editors or readers, or, for that matter, certain academicians who think they have the divine right to deem what is worthy of reading and what is not. It's also easy to say, who cares whether or not you're published; just write what feels right to you, and sooner or later someone, somewhere, will want to publish it.
     The stark reality is that everyone who writes dreams of having their labors rewarded with publication and readership. Like it or not, publication is a game, like pretty much everything else, and you have to play by the rules if you want to succeed. Perhaps down the line, when you're solidly established, you can throw those rules out the window and play by your own, but until then you have to find that line and toe it. Of course, there is always the self-publication/vanity press route, or you may cast your poetic seeds on the winds of cyberspace and let them take root where they may. But there are still those old-fashioned diehards like myself who put the most stock in the traditional route. Though I have had pieces published in a couple of online journals, I find much more gratification in receiving a printed journal in the mail and seeing my words on an actual page—call me a dinosaur, but it makes me feel more like a real poet.
     What I find discouraging is that so many of the poems I've written that are my personal favorites, are of the kind most editors dismiss. I'm talking about love poems—yes, to use the term again, "old-fashioned" love poems, the kind of love poems the average non-poetry-reading person can not only relate to and understand, but actually like. What passes for a "love poem" today in loftier publications is likely to be veiled in literary language and devices that go over the heads of most people who possess more romance than scholarship. That is not to say these people are less intelligent or even less educated; it is to say that there is a huge readership outside the tight circle of literary criticism and academia, an intelligent readership that passes over poetry because, in their own words, they simply can't understand it. Don't give me "you don't have to understand, just feel it" or "whatever it means to you, that's fine." I don't think there's a poet in the world worth his salt who writes a poem without a specific meaning in mind, however multi-faceted and multi-layered that meaning may be. To do otherwise is pointless—in my humble opinion.
     I thought long and hard before deciding to have my own poetry blog. I know that once I post a poem on it, it's considered "published" and few editors will consider printing it in their own publications. So I decided to post poems that have already been in print, or poems that editors likely will not want to print. And it seems that what I've suspected all along is being verified: the poems my readers like the most are the "old-fashioned" love poems that are accessible and readily understood (they are also the poems that I think editors would reject and academicians would pooh-pooh as "sentimental"). I must say, I'm gratified by this verification. It encourages me to keep writing the kind of poetry that comes most fluently and easily to me, the kind that truly comes from my heart, my experience, my struggles, joys, and sorrows. It encourages me to be true to my voice. But I'm also slowly coming to accept that, if I still want publication in the traditional sense, I'll sometimes have to write a bit outside my natural comfort zone—which I have done, and know I can do well. I know I'm a good craftsman, and I know I'm capable, deep down, of producing a poem that has both craft and soul.
     Maybe someday everything will fuse together, and I'll write poetry that is truly popular and truly "literary." Then again, how many poets reach that rarified height? We can all dream, can't we?