Epic Fail

Epic fail--two words I have heard from my niece quite a bit recently.

And epic fail was how I was feeling about the two poems I worked on this weekend.

The first poem is based on an idea I've been kicking around for four or five months, and I thought that I had finally figured out how to render it. But after investing hours this weekend, no.....

The second poem was an idea I came up with this past week but only this weekend had a chance to execute. So I sat down and followed my idea to its conclusion. And ended up with a poem that was very interesting to write but which does not need to be foisted on any readership.

So I was thinking that the weekend had been a failure, poetically speaking.

But then I had another thought. I realized that while the form I had attempted for the first poem hadn't been fruitful, it had led me to an idea of what I want to try next. So even though the poem isn't any closer to being, one useless idea has been identified and a better one, one that at least will bring me one step closer to bringing this poem into the world, has been identified. While that wasn't the result I was hoping for this weekend, it isn't exactly a failure.

And the second poem, well....it didn't work out. But it was a brand new idea, completely unlike anything I've ever done, and the exercise was interesting. So while it didn't end up as a piece I would ever want to share, it was a creative experience.

My mom used to say I was trying to figure out what to be in life by process of elimination. And it is by this same circuitous route of trying and abandoning ideas one by one by one that I am figuring out poems. It isn't failure; it's process, even when it doesn't feel like progress.