How to handle a poem a day

[highlyeccentric]

Having to select, copy and/or type up, and post a poem every day is boring. It's boring, mechanical, and feeds my inclinations to turn everything into a routine and a to-do list. I'm more likely to share something I found online, or which I can find by googling, because that saves me typing it up. Some days I pull poems out of my bookmarks file which don't really do much for me, it's just that they're all I have left. Often my chief motivation to keep reading whatever anthology I'm on at the moment is to leaven the steady diet of poetry and exceptindreams.

So those are the drugery aspects. One pleasant outcome is that now I read every poem twice - often more. I seem to be likely to skim something which comes up on my reading lists, and quickly decide whether to save it or not. I really read it when deciding what to post - and if it's not a stand-out MUST REBLOG AT ONCE situation, the poem may be considered several times before it ends up in my daily post. If I type it up, I find I'm likely to develop a deeper appreciation of the rhyme and rhythm aspects than I did when reading through and tagging interesting work in the anthology of the week.

I don't offer commentary on every poem I post. I seem particularly likely to comment on poems which are a step out of sync with the current posting pattern - some comment on why, for instance, I liked this particular 19th century Canadian sentimental poem about the wilderness. The rare selections from my 'work' material - snatches of Middle English, or, this semester, Prof. Early Modern's idea of teachable modern poetry - I usually post with a context note explaining their presence. If a poem is of interest to me because I'm linking it to some OTHER poem, I might note that. But I don't dissect or close-read the content I'm posting: I might have signed up for an onerous routine, but I'm not trying to make it actual WORK.