New poem added to Contemporary Poetry: "Not In The Picture."
Part of the fun of any creative writing is playing with observations of everyday occurrences and embellishing them so that they not only illuminate the original observation but also extend the idea into other areas. Sometimes these areas are directly related and sometimes they are not. Sometimes the relationship is at the emotional level rather than the cognitive level. Part of being a psychotherapist is helping people make connections at the emotional level of things that don't seem related at all at the cognitive level. Most people speak in metaphors but they often don't understand their own metaphors. They are emotionally removed from them. One of the nice things about poetry is that it brings metaphors to the forefront and forces us to search for the meanings generated by the metaphors. It urges us to look inside of ourselves to find meaning rather than to look outside ourselves for it. There is no one particular way that a poem can be seen if it is a successful poem. We need to be reminded from time to time that there are multiple meanings in our experiences if we are open to them. Doggedly clinging to only one way of looking at things is not very adaptive in the long run.