...Or 'poetry that's going to be workshopped' at any rate.
It has to be personal enough, to capture the reader's interest, but not so personal that I'm metaphorically stripping in the middle of class. It has to be emotional, without being emo. This is not so much the class's requirement as my own. I firmly believe in eschewing sentimentality in my fiction, and I don't see why that should be any different in my poetry. If the situation I'm writing about is emotional, I want to let it speak for itself, rather than manipulating the reader. But that brings me back to the question of personal.
To make a long story short, I have no subject matter. I can pick a random event from my life and write about that, but if it's not too personal, it could end up not personal enough - trite. I could take a fictional story of mine and use that, but it could end up cliche and bad, if I condense it that much. Also, fantasy/sci fi does not lend itself well to poetry. I could...
Fuck it, I'm just making excuses. It's time to step back, let the writer's block run its course, then pick things up again. Maybe if I write something else, or at least work on RP tags, I'll get back into shape, so to speak.
