What do you find most difficult about writing poetry?
Just getting the first line or stanza down. Almost everything after that is easy and just comes out. Then you get to the end and want the end to be beautiful, so you get stuck near the last stanza or line. Something has to be resolved or spoken of or given meaning.
Giving meaning to your ideas is difficult. Really you’re always trying to make your poem vindicate yourself and your ideas and your emotions. I think my poems are emotional. They’re hollow if I feel nothing in the act of writing them. The first part is the idea and the last is the emotional breakthrough where you feel like you’ve lived through something in your chair in front of your computer or notebook. Maybe that’s foolish.
Something that’s become difficult as I get older is this unconscious compulsion to compare myself to other writers. Like, that good writer is doing such and such and they get published, so maybe I should try that too in my own way. That’s nonsense though. When I get that thought I remind myself it is nonsense and it doesn’t matter at all what anyone else is doing, even if it’s your favourite writers. Sometimes it can be difficult to be yourself when you lose yourself in others.
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