Freedom in Verse

I write poems. Does that make me a poet? What if nobody reads them?

If you know anything about poetry, you’ll recognize the above as a haiku. The form is simple. Three lines: five syllables, then seven syllables, then five again. Those are the rules. Poetry has a lot of rules, and most of them are made to be broken. It’s what I like best about writing poetry: mastering the rules and then breaking them. I’ve been a prose writer most of my life and that too involves rules, but breaking them can be risky. That’s why late in life I’ve found a kind of freedom in verse.

My adventure in poetry began more than a year ago, after my latest novel was rejected, for two reasons. One, my first published novel did not earn out its advance. (Publishers pay authors ahead of publication, in effect gambling on a book’s success. If the book doesn’t sell as well as anticipated, the author keeps the advance money. The...