Recaping My 30/30

In case anyone was wondering, there was a reason I labeled my poems as 5.5, 12.9 and such at certain points. And it wasn't just to boot my numbers, though that inevitably happened.

This past April, I made it a side goal to have all 30 poems be "serious" efforts. This meant I couldn't count any single haiku, limericks or poems I considered "gimmicks" like the seaweed baby poems from past years or the Jesus poems that have come up this year. Of course, this meant I was prone to create almost as many "non-serious" poems as serious ones. The result was less than what I hoped for, and in the end I did rely on a gimmick of sort in the form poems like the tretina and, of course, the sonnet.

I consider most of my 30/30 months failures, whether or not I've finished. The one success I'm happy with from this year(aside from finishing nearly two hours early) was finally writing a sonnet after having avoided one for over five years. I didn't even do one with hundreds of opportunities to do so during last year's 365/365 challenge. Too intimidated. I'm in no rush to do another after doing fourteen in a row (fourteen fourteen line stanza'ed poems, get it?) but at least I did one or two half-decent ones. Maybe even a decent one or two.

As I get more "successful" during these writing challenges, I reflect back to when I participated in things like National Poetry Writing Month way back before my local scene made them trendy. I did it to get the bad work out of me and produce better work. If I am producing better work as I think I am, I think the sheer volume has less to do with the quality of my work than ever.

It makes me wonder if the current trend will reach a critical point, leading the next challenge to be something like, "Write on very memorable poem, then walk away."

Thanks to everyone who read my work, whether you commented or just silently trolled.