Thank you

Thanks so much for reading my poetry. I'd become discouraged; you lifted me up.

I've read enough poetry over the years, been enough of a reader to know that to become known as "poet" I needed to have at least some of my poems published. So I started sending my poetry out to literary journals, to magazines and even the New York Times. (The Times was a lark--what appeal could rural poetry have in our nation's largest city?) All I got back were rejection letters. One editor admitted to 'liking' "Trains"--but not enough to publish it. Otherwise, a great yawning silence. So on December 26, 2013 I started this blog, Country Traffic Jam.

In less than two weeks my poetry blog has had nearly 500 page views. Of course, that is not a huge number. But we are talking about a blog almost exclusively made up of poems--not a discussion of politics or the latest offense to sensibility carried out by some celebrity of the moment. Indeed,  I had thought that the blog would be something that basically Jeanine, members of my writing group, and I would read. Under those circumstances, nearly 500 readers in two weeks is an astonishing number. Thank you.

Poetry I write for me. But feedback is great--and that requires publication (of some sort). So I started the blog  as a way to 'publish' my poetry. And now I find that the poetry has some appeal. Wow!

Thank you, very very very much.

Bill McCann,
the Roxford Poet