Bowl of Spoons

Canon EOS 20D

Working through what is likely the first real and sustained case of writer's block I've ever experienced. I have very little confidence in what I'm writing. I think it stems from a rejection letter I received from a small Canadian publisher--a rejection that said my work was expository and chatty. I tried to shrug it off as one publisher's narrow opinion, but couldn't shake the jolt it had on my confidence. I started to second guess everything I was writing: Maybe it is too expository and chatty? Though a few friends have said it's the expository and chatty nature of my poetry that makes it stand out and work. Then I started to see the rejection letter as a challenge: Maybe it is time for me to explore new forms, tones, styles, etc. with my poetry? So I got into some of the more complex rhyming schemes and forms of Paul Muldoon, revisited Hopkins, Auden, Ted Hughes. Now, I'm looking at the few poems I laboured over int he past 10 days or so, and I'm thinking: They'd probably be better poems if I wrote them the way I write not the way I'm trying to write.

Needless to say, thank God for cameras. This particular shot is from a used appliance store window on Wyandotte St. E.