On AG I'm starting a Poet of the Month, where in the last week of every month a vote takes place on the AMW board to vote for the Poet of the Month. The voting page is here: [link]

I'm pleased to announce that the poet of the month is wolf1991! Wolf is a frequent contestant in the Poetry Contest, as well as a well-read author in his own right on his personal writing thread, The Words and Workings of Wolf: [link] . I don't know if he has a DeviantArt account, but I hope he does.

As a poet, Wolf's style draws heavy inspiration from the Modernists, from poets as T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. I appreciate how his poetry is very clean and clear: What needs to be said is said plainly but powerfully. This is a very important quality to have when writing darker, more melancholy poetry! I also greatly enjoy reading Wolf's poetry out loud, especially his free verse, which he excels the most. Let me show you, for example, an excerpt from my personal favorite of his poems, An End of Sorts:

Here is our end. My sweetest of friends.
My true listener of hearts. One of love I bear this hard.
And you would have me spent,
Wasted away and left to wait
Upon the sands of the beach where no waves flow.
A desert bereft of hope.
And should this, this fate for me be the thing you wish
Then let is be so.
And to the sea I shall never go.

I shall grant you any wish
Should it be within myself to give.
And if you wish to send me away
I'll never trouble you again. Not today nor ever.
But I would have you know,
I am sorry. Sorry that I have little left to give
And have given you so little in the end.
And let the punishment fit the crime
I have burned you, scarred you and harmed you, for the last time.
I would have you know,
I do apologize.

And here I know
To the sea I shall not go.

And here, now as I stand beside the cliffs
I can hear the waves call me.
And I reflect on these twisted rotted thing
The things we call good times.
And of friendships then and now.
And here, here sit the waves.
And I shall never know,
For to the sea I shall not go.

When I read this out loud, I was quite blown away. It has the ring of that musical cadence that Pound wrote about (and which is common in Wolf's writing instead of meter), it has clarity of prose, it has a very deep look into human nature itself. It is a look into emotion without the stereotypical Romantic lens.

The other thing about Wolf is that he is very thematically versatile. He is capable of writing about themes and subjects that are out of his usual, from a running wolf to love poetry. His prose is also fair to read, if not as good as his poetry.

I also appreciate how Wolf has provided an example to other poets and earned their respect, as the week's vote showed. May you continue to be an inspiration, Wolf.

This is a copy of the post on AG, found here: [link]