The most recent poem I posted is, I think, pretty different from what I’ve been posting.

It was a piece I had been working on, had abandoned, and decided to revisit after the “ghostly” comments of yesterday (thanks, upendedurn and anselm23). I figure if an image is in the air enough to make a couple of people look for it, and to make me use the same image in a different poem, it’s time to go back and look at it again.

I put finishing touches to it, at least for this draft, and posted it. I felt like I needed to get back in the saddle fast after yesterday’s locked, whiny post.

I looked it over and realized how different it was structurally, and it struck me that a major difference was that it was written in Word instead of directly in the LJ posting space. That seems to make me more willing to stretch out and play with longer lines, more extended narrative structures, etc.

The tools, I think, make a difference.

I long ago stopped writing in longhand, not finding it especially well adapted to the way I write (with lots of editing as I go, cut and paste, etc.) Word works well enough for me.

I may go back, now, and see if there is a difference in the way I write a longhand poem as well; something I’ve missed there that I need to recapture — something in kinesthetic learning, etc.

Does anyone else have anything to say on their experience with this?