The editorial pages are once again full with your letters discussing Lincoln County concerns: Whitefield’s proposed electronic sign, demolition of a building in Damariscotta, broadband in Newcastle, PFAS contamination, local select board elections, and the importance of attending your upcoming town meetings.
A couple letters came in about other issues. As of this writing, I do not know if we will have room to run them. But aside from their failure to articulate an impact to Lincoln County (though certainly implied), these letters followed the guidelines we shared last week.
Thank you.
I also received a few poems for a block we occasionally run in the editorial section called “Poet’s Corner.”
I offer some guidance here, too.
As an editor, my news judgment must be solid and defensible, based on facts, supported by evidence.
But judging poetry – especially for inclusion in the newspaper – requires a different sort of discernment, one that I am particularly attuned to as a creative writer.
I don’t flash these colors very often as a journalist. “Creative” could be regarded as less than accurate. And downright suspicious.
Who knows what a poet or fiction writer might do with the facts, considering how drawn they are to the metaphorical, spelunking for the “truth” only accessed through impressions, intuitions?
I wasted years of my career wringing my hands, worried I couldn’t be a creative writer and any kind of “real” journalist, like Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz” protesting to the Munchkins, “But I’m not a witch at all.”
And yet, here we are. Nothing – no master of fine arts, no endless workshop critiques, no amazing mentors, no library of books about writing, not even keeping a journal for 40 years (no exaggeration … this all started when I was 11) – taught me more about writing well than writing for newspapers.
That said, I cast off those lines for the moment to tell you what I am looking for in the poems you send to The Lincoln County News.
I want to be moved. I want to feel something inside of me that perhaps originated inside the poet. Poetry is heart to heart. Or maybe it’s heart to hand, hand to heart. And also something that transcends the personal. A good poem reminds you, after all, that you are not alone.
Poems have their own sensibility and logic, and their accuracy is one of emotional resonance through clear, yet evocative details. This is every bit as important to a poem as facts are to a news story.
I like to leave a poem still savoring it, like the sour bite of the first August apple, or snow melting from the ribbing of a hand-knit cap, mixing with tears as they slide down the face of a love returned.
What does it feel like? That’s one of the questions poetry asks. We include “Poet’s Corner” because the human experience is far greater and infinitely deeper than what is captured by a reporter’s notebook or camera.
“Poet’s Corner” is another way for readers to express themselves in the paper. We welcome those who want to shape their impressions poetically, along with those who share their opinions.
I am disinclined to publish political poems for the same reasons that we do not want our editorial pages filled with political opinions, though like those letters, I will consider poems such as these if they are well written and only if there is room.
Other considerations: I am not a poet in education or in practice, so it is unlikely I would reject a poem because it doesn’t rhyme (or because it does). I can’t really tell a sestina from a villanelle, though I do recognize a sonnet on sight.
But that doesn’t matter because what I want from a poem is to be changed by it – even in the smallest, most infinitesimal way.
“The moment of change,” wrote Adrienne Rich, “is the only poem.”
Please send poems to my attention at info@lcnme.com.
