The Mad Poets Blog

Every writer experiences their share of block, and I bet if you talk to 10 writers, you’ll get 10 different explanations of how it happens.  For me, usually, I can’t write a dang thing when the block hits.  No.Thing.  It’s crappy.

Tonight, though, I hit a different kind of wall.  I was outside playing with my son when an idea for a poem hit.  Fortunately he wanted a break from me, so I let him play with his new Lightning McQueen toy while I scrambled off to find some paper.  I scribbled out the first draft of the poem - the initial idea (which was something like two lines) led naturally on to the next idea, and the next and the next, until I had a full first draft.   After putting the little monster to bed, I transferred the poem from my notes to my laptop, and did a bit of editing.

And now I’m looking at the poem and thinking, “Damn. This sounds just like this other poem I wrote.  And that other poem I wrote.  And a little like that one, too.”  I have four poems that have the same pacing, the same rhythms, the same voice.  I know each writer develops a voice, and I have my own.  The problem is that these poems are slightly different than what I’ve been writing for the past few years - they’re not the carefully paced and stanzaed poems I’ve been laboring over.  They’re a bit breathless, a bit looser,  a bit more informal and conversational.

The four poems span a pretty good range of topics: a walk with my son, a hate crime, a sexual assault and being on the receiving end of inconvenient news.  But I’m worried that’s not enough - is a difference in topic alone enough to make the poems successful instead of derivative? Is similarity in voice and rhythm enough to doom a set of poems to failure?

Perhaps I’m being a little melodramatic here.  I’m just a little worried that the poems will seem unoriginal and uninspired.

So what do you think - when you’re reading a collection by a poet and you come across several poems in the collection that are reminiscent of each other in voice and style, are you put off? And do you find this happening in your own writing?