Exposition in Poetry Collections, thoughts?

Yeah I've been following. - I've tried blogging in the past, not for poetry but in general. I'm terrible at upkeep on them. - I have wanted to do mini poetry films, like reading the poem over a small animation on Tiktok, Insta, and Threads. I thought of adding some exposistion to the text in the "comments/text below" section. - As I keep back ups of all my poems on the cloud in google drive, I have taken to writing exposistions in the doc with the poem for if it is ever needed. I thought for like a 5 or 10 year annaversy of a poetry collection it might be nice to release an annoted version of it, kind of like school educational text.

Hi Mark Stevenson are you following these thoughts you initiated. What are your ideas on a blog?

Fence hopping, too. I think ideally I would want the best of both worlds: such as a poetry book with an index in the back and a link to a blog post for each poem that provides the background. Then I can enjoy the poems for their own value, and if I want to know more and go online to read. 😁

I quite like hearing from the author, about their experience and intentions, but I don't think I would want it annotation style in a body of work.

Many years ago I worked in a community based youth program, you had to accept that there were different sets of expectations, motives, and what outcomes were wanted. Thus recipients of service, project workers, management and funding body were part of different sets. The project was intersection of those sets. The same is true for a poem, author, publisher (outcomes are different even in self publishing.), reader have different motives, expectations, needs that make them different sets.

Now to answer the question, I usually never read any written about a poem until I have read the poem. I find an exposition sometimes useful to fully article what my experience of the poem is. Someone else's interpretation may add to my understanding of my own emotional reaction. But particularly for poems written in past centuries an understanding of prevailing attitudes, what standard forms the poem may be challenging. Ideas on what the poet thought about the use of forms can enhance my appreciation. A current day exposition may assist readers of the future to understand us. Herb comment suggests may 'expositions are motivated by considerations other than the poem.

Haha a great thread Mark! You have us all on the fence and undecided! Thanks for sharing

That's a great question! I share the indiciion as well. For an entire collection, it may be helpful to point me in the right direction. The poet wants to make a point and a few directions might get me there. For individual poems, if it needs an explanation, the poem might not fulfill its mission. For example, I recall reading a short (3-line) offering on Instagram. It had some meaning to me, so I ckicked to read more of the poet's comments. The language of their comment could have made a beautiful poem, and I failed to see their explanation in the actual poem. Having said that, I have been kicked out of more than one poetry group on FaceBook due to the interpretation of my ambiguous poem. Now that I think of it, perhaps the admin had enough of my ambiguous poems. I remain undecided.

It’s a fantastic thread, Mark! I’m also so divided on this! Personally, I really don’t enjoy explaining my OWN poems. I like the reader to interpret the piece as they see fit. Mostly because I’ve received so many messages from followers who say: I love your poem because it made me think / reminded me of X,Y, and Z. And it would be so far from what I actually had in mind when writing the piece, which I find amazing!

That being said, my favourite anthology, which I spoke about just last night on my livestream, has an introduction to each poem by a public figure and I think it adds a wonderful element. So I’m also on the fence 😂😂😂

It’s down to fellow Covers to sway me one way or the other I suppose!

Thanks for posting this, Mark!