Do I Have Favorite Poems?

I'm usually not a person with a lot of favorites. I have preferences, but I rarely elevate something to be labeled as Above All Others. I also don't like to ascribe the term to something that might be transient in nature–if I choose favorites, I want it to be something I'm capable of loving through all weather and time. So when I'm asked if I have favorite poems I've written . . . It's a tough thing to answer.

On one hand, I'm both a writer and an editor. I write until I love it, edit until I hate it then love it and back again, and continuously reread it until it's published–all the while thinking of what I could have done differently or making tweaks. It's very hard for me to read one of my pieces without looking at it critically or through the eyes of my older, more grown self. There are few poems of mine that I read and am perfectly happy with the result.

There are, however, plenty of poems that I just can't reread. Like, I do literally skip over them once the book is finished. Because of what and how I write, my poems are kind of like a record of various parts of my life, an honest chronicling of the joyful and the painful moments. Moments that I'm glad to have processed and healed and grown from, but that I can't always stomach returning to without a great or intentional reason. There are poems that are good, timely reminders. And there are pieces that are always a lovely memory to hold again.

Even so, I don't think I could ever pick favorites, not truly. I love a trip down memory lane, but I'm generally trying to move forward. And nostalgic reading doesn't write new poems. My favorite poems are almost exclusively the ones I'm in the middle of composing. I'm not being any kind of way when I say that, I genuinely am enjoying the act of creating and the foraging for the perfect word and the clarifying intensity of honing my writing instinct, even when working on those emotionally and mentally difficult pieces. So here's to the yet unwritten pieces, the future favorites: May they flow and make better writers of us.

Happy writing!