Famous Friendship Poems

Poetry – Good Poems Require Tremendous Honesty
By Ugur Akinci

I'm an amateur poet. Have written probably a total of 100 good poems in my life that still would not make it to any of the major national poetry magazines. (Not that I haven't tried, trust me...)

However, I was very honored about six months to get accepted to a poetry writing Master Class conducted by a bona fide and famous poet who heads the creative writing program in a major university in my area.

This is a man whose poems I've admired greatly and have just finished a collection of his recently published works.

My first reaction to the news was to call back my writer's center and make sure that it wasn't a joke or anything.

No, it was true. I was indeed accepted to the Master Class of only 12 budding poets and the selection was made on the basis of our sample poems by none other than The Master himself.

Wow! I was floored. What an honor. What a delight.

But the next emotion was one of absolute dread and fear!

It was one thing reading my poems to my wife and loved ones.

But it would be a whole another kind of experience to expose them to the eagle-like scrutiny of a nationally renown poet and actually a “hero” of mine.

Jeeez, what the heck was I getting myself into?!

Once the workshop got underway I was really amazed at the quality of writing in that small group of ours.

We were all unknown poets, some of us, like me, never even published. But those lines, absolutely haunting, winding, exquisite lines, reminded me once again why I loved poetry so much in the first place.