Dovina30 Apr 2005

I will tentatively accept that we are entering some new period of getting along. But you must understand that I am like the wary person attacked by tigers in my recent poem "Racism." If I write such a didactic poem as a person claiming that content and meaning are the prime ingrediaents for judging her own writing's worth, it behooves me to heed my own words. The title is "Racism" but the message is broader.

My favorite of my poems is usually the most recent, unless the recent one is intintionally silly or retribution or parody or some such. I write several poems in an average week, and usually the one I post after the obligatory two-day wait is the most recent. "Racism" is currently my favorite.

A poem can be self-contradictory and still a good poem. Matters of belief and emotion often conflict with logic and often work better when they do. I rate a poem most highly when it settles as true on some level, and even higher if its truth is well presented.

"Check and mate" is so self-congratultory an arogant, a reversal to what I have learned to expect.