A Question

A person from Quora (a question-and-answer site I am active in) asked whether it is common for someone from my community to use poetry when they want to show affection. I said that it was not common. I live in Alabama, and there are very few good poets here. In fact, there are few poets at all. Furthermore, most people around here don't use third-party poetry to show affection. Most don't use the poetry of great poets to commemorate events. I had a psychiatrist who said he wrote poems to his wife, but they probably sucked. Most amateur poets don't know what they are doing. 

There is a very good essay called "Sahara of the Bozart" written in 1920 by H.L. Mencken in which says that the South is a wasteland where very little good art is produced. At the time there was very little in the way of poetry, fiction, or painting that came out of the South. While the South has improved a great deal since then (We've had William Faulkner from Mississippi, and others) Alabama is still basically a wasteland.

In my writer's bio I always mention that I am from Alabama. I want to be a credit to my state. I want there to be more good poets from Alabama. There are good writers from Tennessee and Georgia, but not so many from Alabama. That needs to change. Read "Sahara of the Bozart." Maybe you come from a part of the world in which little in the way of poetry or fiction is produced. You can change that. You can be a light to the nations, and you can lift your people up. We need more painters, more sculptors, more poets, more fiction writers. Art helps the mind grow. It reminds us of things we would otherwise forget.

If you want to read more of my poetry you can buy a copy of my first book, Late Alabama. Google it.

Peace,

Joel