Sale For Poetry Month

Un-Clenched Emotion, Kindle Edition, will once again be on sale for ninety nine cents (.99) for poetry month. The book normally costs $2.99. Get it by going to this link: https://www.amazon.com/Clenched-Emotion-Natasha-Gruss-ebook/dp/B01LZNVH4Y The sale starts on Monday April 22nd 2024 and will end Monday April 29th 2024. I have not been successful with these sales before, but maybe this time will be better. I wasn't ordinally successful giving my book away for free at first either. However last year, I made the best seller for free books list on Amazon. I have set some advertising up this time which I haven't tried before. Fingers crossed. It's also April, poetry month, and this blog get more traffic this month. Here's one of my poems from the book to give you a taste of what it is like:

YouTube Video of The Sea

Obviously, for poetry month I have been working on marketing. I learned about Amazon Ads. There was a rumor going around on Facebook that a book would get in Amazon's newsletter if it had 50 ratings and over a four star review. I asked Alexa, and she said it was not enough. She pretty much said that it was secret the way Amazon chooses to place books in their newsletter. This stuff is hardly poetic. I have done a lot of work on my next book, Seasons of Sensation. It's still nowhere near complete but is really coming along. That's what I have REALLY done for poetry month. I haven't decided how I am going to publish Seasons of Sensation, whether I'll try a traditional publisher or if I'll publish on my own. I hope that you choose to buy Un-Clenched Emotion this time and decide that you would like to read more of my stuff.

Should Poems Have a Title?

Photo by Alisa Anton on Unsplash

If you read a lot of poetry, you will notice that there are many poems out there without a title. In fact, a very famous poet, Emily Dickinson, did not title any of her poems. The choice to title poems is up to the author. It is the readers right to have an opinion on whether a title should be placed or not. I am of the belief that the choice of titling a poem is a matter of artistic expression.

There was a time in my life when I titled some of my poems and left others without a title. Now I title everything. The reason for that is because, submitting a poem for publication, I got rejected. The reason they gave me was that they could not figure out what the poem was about. I realized that adding a title would add clarity and add a little extra something to the poem. I titled the rejected piece, "It's All About The Sky," and don't remember if I submitted it for publication anywhere else.

I also choose to add titles to my poems for easier organization and recognition. When writing many pieces, it is helpful to have an indicator of which piece is being talked about in a conversation or in a paper. It also helps in poetry collection books. It can be argued that a title to a poem is unnecessary for organization. When a poem has no title, its first line becomes the title. That has been the case with Dickson's poems in my English books. Still, I think titles are beneficial for clarities sake.

I have run into the problem of giving some of my works the same title. It will be quite a project going through my writings and figuring which titles should be changed, or if I am willing to have some of my poetry titled the same. I have so many poems that giving every piece a different title might be unattainable. It is possible that I may choose to have the first line of my poem become the new title. If this is the case, I will write that one line down twice. There's nothing wrong with a little repetition in poetry.

 

It is kind of weird that some poets choose to go without. An author would probably not write a book without a title. That would be weird. It may be that some poets don't title their poetry for the very sake of weirdness. That's fine. Titling poetry is a choice. I have nothing against authors who choose not to title their poems. I, however, now choose to title mine.

Photo by Tim Foster on Unsplash

 

They Left Out the Title

Empty words expected to be gleaned through inference.
But how can we tell when the line before and the line after is left blank?
It puts a new meaning to 'reading in between the lines'.
Reading the words after blank spaces,
our hearts may be captivated
and our creativity may spell the subject out.
Our own interpretation.
That must be the hope of those who left the title without.