What I didn’t know then was there was already an organized effort to write a poem a day and post it on Twitter. If you’re a Twitterer and you’re interested in following what’s going on with poetry there, here are three hashtags you can follow:

1. #twitpoem (my poetry experiment)
2. #poetrymonth
3. #poetry

There’s a lot going on at Twitter for National Poetry Month. I hope you’ll follow me.

I’ve thought about this a lot lately. I said a while back that I was about ready to retire Rumsfeld’s Sandbox and start on something new. Of course, this is a book of poems, but the principle should hold for projects as well as individual poems. When it’s time to quit, it’s time. But when?

I’m not ready to give up on Rumsfeld’s Sandbox just yet. Emotionally, I’m ready for it to end, but there are still things left unsaid. Or perhaps it says too much. I feel that certain poems need more work, but I also feel that I’m missing a couple of poems and the hole that is left by their absence is gnawing at my intestines like a bad cancer. I can’t get it out.

I know, though, that some of the poems are “done.” They are complete. I know this because I can’t take anything else out of them and still improve them. What is there belongs. Nothing else belongs because to add to them would be like trying to pour a glass of water down the Niagara Falls. If that sounds absurd then I’ve made my point.

That’s when I know that an individual poem is finished: If I can look at it and not feel impelled to change it in any way then I’m ready to move on. But what about a book of poems?

I suspect that a book length project is the same. It isn’t finished until I can read through the collection and make no more additions, changes, or deletions and improve it. That’s quite a statement because if a collection is missing just one poem that belongs there then it isn’t finished. But what if that poem isn’t written yet? What if it is written, but I just don’t know it. What if it’s buried deep in my “come back to later” file and has been stored there for years? How will I find it?

I think finishing is a much more frightening experience than beginning. Because to finish a poem means that I’ve lived through it. Like a close call with death. As it happens you don’t notice, but after you’ve felt the tingling brush it becomes so noticeable you can’t get anything else out of your mind. And I’ve done this with poems. I have gone back and read and re-read a poem that I’ve written and finished and not changed it at all just to solidify in my mind that it’s done. And after about 50 times of that I am ready to share it with the world. Shards and all.

Cheerios to donate childrens books.

The Georgia Review wins.

Love, American style.

Telling stories at 100.

On Luna Park.

My poet can beat up your poet.

How to turn a newspaper into a poem.

Shel Silverstein has a nephew?

Those young’uns have no sense of culture.

Five lessons for poets – from Henry Rollins, no less.

Conjunctions.

All Girls’ School.

A love poem by Frank O’Hara.

Rilke’s “The Swan”.

Doctrine of Signatures.

The National Book Critics Circle recommends ….

A “Bard Double-Dactyled (in Sioux City) and Other Odd Pieces” (including one on Humpty Dumpty).

Lebanese art and poetry that unites.

A poem for Heath Ledger.

Recombinant Poetics.

The Library of Congress Blog is nominated.

Why poets should blog.

Can you write 30 poems in 30 days?

The wisest words ever written:

So the message of this post (I really should try to have a message, shouldn’t I?) is that you shouldn’t get caught up in wondering what’s going to happen to your poetry after you write it; you should just write it.

One such idea is collaborative poetry. I’ve considered collaborative writing before, but never with poetry. I’m impressed by the solid ideas for collaborative poetry writing that the anonymous poster operating under the pseudonym Ceridwen has offered, among them:

• Send a chainpoem where each link in the chain writes a line and sends it to someone else
• Take turns with your collaborator through IM by writing alternating lines or stanzas
• Write a poem and take out all important words, then send the poem to your collaborators asking them to fill in the blanks
• Put together a group of words you like and ask your collaborator to use them in a poem
• Send a poem to your collaborator so that he or she can write a “companion piece”
• Cut a poem into single words and phrases and send them to a collaborator to piece together like a puzzle

All of these are excellent ideas. Games like these can spurn wild bouts of creativity. Remember, some famous poems in history were written as a result of their authors being involved in similar challenges. One that comes to mind is “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley, who wrote the poem as a challenge.

Another interesting idea from Ceridwen is the American Sentences form created by Beat great Allen Ginsberg. American Sentences are a take on the Haiku form and are simple sentences written out like a normal English sentence but limited to 17 syllables. Paul Nelson elaborates on this more at his website.

What would happen if we combined these two useful exercises? Can we collaborate on an American Sentence? I’d like to try. I’ll write the first nine syllables. You follow up by completing the sentence and the other eight syllables. I’m anxious to see what we come up with.

Here’s the first half of our American Sentence:

Don’t blame me, I’m below belief; low …