From: Lbhcove_at_aol.com
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2012 15:51:27 -0400 (EDT)

In response to Kristine O'Connell George's post:

One wonders how ideas spread among editors at publishing houses. It has

been a trend now for years that poetry collections MUST have a theme. Why? How did this get started? Why can't the trend be broken?

For decades books of poems such as Kristine cited were the norm. Not only a welcome book by Livingston but one by, for example, NEAR THE WINDOW TREE, POEMS AND NOTES by Karla Kuskin (also oop) where one can read about a child musing on the moon, wanting it to meet his/her mother, asking: "Have

you met my friend the night?" Then coming across a poem about bugs, discovering city streets 'filled with mustached men', finding such a provo cative command as "Write about a radish/Too many people write about the moon."

Few poets can, or even want to, write a whole volume of poems about one subject. Few can muster this satisfactorily.

Light verse seems to reign; too many Silverstein-copycats when there was

only one Silverstein; too many grossed subjects - farting, nose-picking,

burping, spitting on one another. Perhaps it IS time to ask our children if they

might "Write about a radish...". Perhaps it is time for poetry ... again.

LBH

Visit my site at: _www.leebennetthopkins.com_ (http://www.leebennetthopkins.com/)
Received on Sat 21 Jul 2012 03:51:27 PM CDT