This is a great idea Heidi, thanks for launching it. And you’ve started it off with quite a topic, or series of topics. I’m going to have to put in my two cents a little at a time.
How much explanation should be shared when discussing a poem with folks who read and review is a big topic.
A small part of the topic is the matter of what explanation should accompany the original posting of a poem. I say none, nothing, nada – a writer should never include a preamble or introduction with the initial posting of a poem. That pollutes the neutral frame of mind for the first reading. A reader needs to have a clean slate. If you want me approach the poem without any preconceptions, don’t tell me you just got dumped by the three-week love of your life, or that you are so deeply in love your eyes are swimming backwards, or you wrote this twenty years ago. Don’t tell me you’ve posted the poem three times before or that its been published twice. And especially don’t tell me you don’t care much about the poem or you just whipped it out of nowhere in 5 minutes. If you don’t care about it, I won’t, and if you spent 5 minutes writing it, I’ll be damned if I’m spending more reviewing it.
And finally, don’t say this is your first poem, or that you are new or the mind-numbing “I’m not a poet.” You wrote and posted a poem – that’s an act of courage. Don’t back-pedal on it.
Proviso: if there is some particularized situation, local custom, special jargon or something like that of which you are pretty certain the reader will be unaware, then it might be fair to consider a footnote type informatory entry- brief and concise. Still, it will color in some way the first impression of readers so do it only sparingly.
Back soon with more.
