Object | Label [work in process]

by Mike Rippy

As I stated in a post on X earlier today, I’m not a poet. I’m not even a writer, but I’m going to go through the motions of making a poem. My hope is to show how someone can start writing bad poetry and, God willing, over time, the poems will improve. Below is the first step into exploring this. I have no expectation of any of this being impressive. In fact I hope its just garbage and that I’m starting into this in the worst way. That way one of you will feel compelled to respond with some feedback. And by extension dropping the apprehension for others to read and write poetry.

Bad analysis and interpretation will come along with this as well. Not just this poem but when looking at other well known poems. My hope is to get people past pretension. I’ve discovered I don’t like Whitman. Feel free to convince me otherwise.

Part I

I work at an art museum so the title or prompt is using the label you would normally find next to a work of art.

I’m going to use a sketchbook and pen to work through my thoughts. I’ll share the images here. I don’t know if this is an appropriate or productive approach but I’m trying to get some kind of conceptual structure around this poem. I may be trying to simplify this too much but I’m enjoying this right now.

I’m enjoying a lot of this just because its taking my mind off life generally. It’s like starting to put a puzzle together; whether to start on the boarder, larger images, pieces of similar color. Let me know if I used that semicolon properly.

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I’ll be setting up a regular Zoom meetup for anyone else who is new to writing poetry and would like feedback from other newbs or hopefully some of the poets I’ve interviewed will occasionally join us.

Let Go The Goat is primarily for Christian writers. If you are a Christian new to writing poetry I can add you to the Substack as a contributor and you can experiment and get feedback as well. Just connect with me if you want to give it a try. I’m open to the process.

If we ever get to a point where we are feeling good about the poems we can look into printing a collection of the poems in a book.

Send me feedback or suggestions.

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Object label example I found online.

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Bonus: Watching the panel discussion below while writing this post. Thanks to Zina for her continuous support for the project.