Kenny Norton

Tag: writing

  • What I Have Learned from Sean Taylor

    For today’s blog, I wanted to highlight a writer that I have learned much from and am still learning from. Sean Taylor, an award winner, is a comic writer, short fiction writer, poet, songwriter, pulp fiction writer, novelist among other ventures. Most of all, he has been a friend and mentor since I was in high school.

    My first lessons from Sean were in songwriting, but many of those lessons still apply to poetry today. I remember a note he wrote on a lyric about a little girl dancing on the street: “I am interested. Tell me more.” That concept has always stuck with me: paint a picture. It is something that I can see in my published poem “Jekyll Island,” where I mention the tide coming in, the beach disappearing, the rocky sea wall and the sea birds.

    When I wanted to be a short story writer, he helped me understand character and story. To me story is the most important thing, whether it is a song, novel, short story or poem. See my earlier blog about how Disney taught me to use story to read more about how humans need story. In my poetry, whether it is stated or not, there is always a story driving it with characters and scene. I will go back to “Jekyll Island”.  The speaker is mourning his first trip back to the island with his infant son without his wife. A simple but effective story.

    As I started writing poetry, I reached out to him, and he shared work from his recent poetry book Tracks for the Troubadours and Other Poems so that I could study technique, word choice and enjambment. There were several things I picked up from him: accessible language is an asset, don’t be afraid of association, let the scene flow naturally and create a unique turn that is memorable.

    One of the things I admire most about Sean’s poetry is that it is easy to read. That does not mean the poems are simple or have nothing beneath the surface. It means the language invites me in. I sometimes read contemporary poetry and feel like I need a decoder ring before I can even begin to understand what the poet is trying to do. Sean reminds me that accessible language can still carry complicated ideas.

    “First Star I See Tonight” is a good example (and one of my favorites in the book). The poem begins with the speaker asking for a “pocketful of starlight” and moves through driving between Atlanta and Chattanooga, pollution, darkness, touch and eventually love. The associations move naturally. One thought leads to another. The poem travels a long way, but I never feel lost.

    That is something I am trying to learn in my own work. I have spent a lot of time studying associative leaps because I want my poems to move beyond a simple retelling of an event. But I have also learned that an associative leap does not have to feel random or intentionally obscure. One image can simply open the door to the next one.

    Sean also reminds me that repetition can do more than repeat. In “Vacation Story (A Very Simple Poem),” the speaker repeats that he loved and kissed someone in city after city during a trip. The pattern is simple, but the final turn changes what the repetition has been building toward: after all those places, the speaker discovers that he loves her somehow more.

    I think there is an important lesson there for me. Sometimes I worry that a poem needs another image, another metaphor or another clever line. Sometimes the structure is already doing the work. If the repetition has created the emotional pressure, I do not need to decorate it.

    Maybe that is the biggest thing I continue to learn from Sean. Poetry does not have to stop sounding like me in order to become better poetry.

    I can use plain language, tell stories and make jokes. I can use things people recognize from everyday life. But underneath those things, I can pay closer attention to how the poem moves: how one image leads to another, how repetition builds meaning, how a word can turn in an unexpected direction and how the ending can make us reconsider everything that came before it.

    Years ago, Sean wrote on that song lyric, “I am interested. Tell me more.”

    I am still trying to do that.

  • How Amy Grant and Wayne Kirkpatrick Taught Me to Write Poetry

    For the next several blogs, I want to write about the people who have influenced me as a writer. I figured I should start with music because I wanted to be a songwriter before I wanted to be a poet.

    I first thought I would write about Amy Grant and Wayne Kirkpatrick separately. Then I realized I really couldn’t. So much of what influenced me came from the songs they wrote together and from the way they use language.

    One thing they taught me is that a poem should not just run in place.

    When I write narrative poetry now, I often ask myself a version of the same question a songwriter might ask before getting to the chorus: Where has this stanza taken the reader that they were not standing four lines ago?

    Poetry does not have much room for filler. There is not a lot of space to waste on weak phrasing or a pile of adjectives trying to make something feel important. Sometimes the right verb can do more work than three modifiers.

    I hear that in Wayne Kirkpatrick’s writing. There is a certain muscle to the phrasing. The words are not there just because they rhyme or fit the rhythm. They hit the ear a certain way.

    That is something I have tried to carry into my own poetry. I want the words to sound right, but I also want them to earn their place.

    The same is true with movement. In narrative poetry, I want each stanza to do something. It can slow down. It can stay with an image. But it should still reveal something, shift something, or move the story somewhere new.

    Grant and Kirkpatrick also taught me a lot about telling stories through images.

    “Lead Me On,” written by Grant, Kirkpatrick, and Michael W. Smith, is a good example. The song moves through history using concrete details instead of just telling us how terrible something was.

    “Whispers in the dark
    Bitter cold terrain
    Echoes of a slamming door”

    Those lines do not explain the emotion. They create it.

    That is something I keep having to remind myself about in my own poetry. A specific image can carry a lot more weight than an explanation of what I want the reader to feel.

    “Takes a Little Time” taught me something different: repetition can build pressure.

    “I know I’ve seen the look before
    Sometimes in faces on the street
    Sometimes in the mirror looking back at me”

    That repeated “sometimes” keeps adding to the feeling before the song moves into the chorus. It is doing more than repeating a word. It is building the emotional movement of the song.

    The song does not have to stop and explain everything. The image, the repetition, and the rhythm have already done much of the work.

    That may be one of the biggest lessons I have carried from songwriting into poetry.

    A poem needs movement. It needs cadence. It needs words that are there for a reason. And sometimes the strongest emotional moment comes when the writer trusts the image enough to stop talking.

    I have probably been using some of these lessons for years without really thinking about where they came from. Now that I am taking poetry more seriously, I hear them differently.

    When I revise, I find myself asking: Did the poem move? Did the image do enough? Did I choose the strongest word? Did I trust the reader enough not to explain everything?

    There is still a lot I can learn from the songs that first taught me how words can carry a story.

  • The Quiet Influence of Wendell Berry

    After reading about Wendell Berry’s death last night, I pulled out my kindle and began reading him again. To my amazement, I never realized the quiet influence he had on my own writing, and I had never really read him before this year.  

    When I decided that I wanted to seriously write poetry for publication, I asked ChatGPT, “who are four modern poets I should read who can help me develop my voice as a poet.” Berry was one of those (I think I might actually write a series of blogs on my influences).  

    What did I learn from him? It showed up a bit under the radar. My early poems were either songs masquerading as poems or Hallmark-type poems, filled with abstract phrases that sounded really nice to the ear. Once I began ingesting what I was reading, my poems changed.  

    I started to trust my plain language and stopped trying to sound poetic. With that I began to trust the natural pulse of how I phrase language and work it into the poem. I can’t say I am fully there yet as I tend to be afraid my poems are too simple, boring and plain. As I am rereading Berry, I am getting a little more comfortable.  

    While I can’t attribute my comfort in writing about the natural world to him, I think he influenced part of my writing. Much of that aspect comes from my love of the Transcendentalist writers and Romantic poems. However, with Berry, I can see now that my use of a simple piece of nature to carry the weight of a poem comes from him. A simple river. A cotton field. A bird outside the window. All these things have been a central image in my poems and carried the emotional message through it.  

    Most of all I think he is teaching me still. The poem can rest in a single image, a single scene – be restrained. It does not need ornate language to make it powerful, letting the natural scene provide meaning, beauty and power. Then, I can use my little darlings, the abstract Hallmark-like phrases, because they are earned.  

  • Imposter, Fraud and Poet

    Sometimes I feel like a fraud, and I have to get used to that.

    Imposter syndrome might be something ubiquitous, but to me, it feels like I am the only one, especially after the tenth rejection letter in a row while struggling with a difficult revision. But I can’t let it get me down.

    Ultimately, I understand a lot of poems in these first batches were not ready or were not fits for journals. Some were nice poems, but not poems journals publish. They’re the type of poems that live sandwiched between “good” poems in a collection. The thing is, I like those types of poems. I enjoy writing those types of poems. I feel like people like reading those types of poems. But journals do not want to publish them.

    So either I am destined to be a homeless, self-publishing poet, an imposter, or I grow to be a publishing poet. Maybe I am all three.

    I never wanted to be a poet, but it seems to be choosing me. In my teens, I wanted to be a singer-songwriter in coffee shops who might one day write a song for myself or someone else that would make it. When that door slammed, and I became an English teacher, I thought I would write short stories and maybe a novel. But I never had the courage to send out my short stories. I found I started several stories, outlined ideas for a lot more, but I never finished them. I have one that I know exactly where I want it to go, but twelve years later, it is still just 75% complete.

    But turning 50 changed everything. I feared being George Gray. Instead of stories, I started writing lyrics again—not that I ever stopped—but they were coming to me faster, stronger, and feeling more poem-like. So I began trying to write poems and sending them out. At least I am not George Gray anymore.

    But I do feel like a fraud. Am I really a poet? Do I have what it takes? Really, though, my deepest fear is that no one will want to publish what I write. So the imposter voice gets louder every time I get that rejection letter.

    The first few powered me to take a leap. I could see it in my drafts. I was honing in on my craft, getting better. Now, the voice seems to be winning, smashing me under its feet like I am a bug. I don’t know how to recover.

    I guess I do, though, as I keep on writing and revising, wrestling with the revision. Trying to force poems I do like, but I am writing something. If I keep putting words to a blank page, which I have always loved doing, one day it might work. It might not be a song that gets to number one with a bullet, but it could be a quiet little poem in a small literary journal that says: you did it; you don’t have to fear being George Gray anymore.

    The rejection letters make it feel like an unscalable mountain, but I have to keep trying.

    I will also share one of those rejected poems, and rightly so. It is not a journal poem.

    MISSISSIPPI FLIGHT

    She hears a call from the distant West,
    stirring a longing long put to rest.
    Will the willows and fireflies remain
    as the fantasy is unspooled?

    In the wind—
    a fever from the Colorado sky.
    In her breath—
    the freedom of the Mississippi flight.

    Fantasy becomes real, no longer a fairytale—
    to feel the prairie dirt turn to rocky ground,
    longing to hear the silence
    of newly fallen snow.

    (C) 2026 Kenny Norton

  • What Can I Learn from Dolly

    I have never considered myself a huge Dolly Parton fan. I liked many of her songs and always recognized that she was one of our great songwriters. Still, as I have been thinking about her work the past 24 hours, especially while trying to understand my own developing voice as a poet, I keep finding lessons in the way she told stories.

    I am a storyteller at heart. While I admire poets who bend language into something almost abstract, I have a harder time writing that way because I am always looking for the story. Dolly understood story.

    Listening again to songs such as “Jolene,” “Coat of Many Colors” and “Joshua,” I began thinking about what can I learn from her songwriting as a poet. Dolly once talked about songs needing to paint a picture, an idea that makes sense to me because the songs I remember most usually give me something I can see.

    In “Joshua” she set up place very well. “a good ways down the railroad track / there was this little old rundown shack,” is such a vivid introduction, and I immediately know the place and I know much about the man that lives already.

    Another thing she does well is that she paints a picture of a human emotion, letting that picture draw us into the lyric quickly. In “Jolene,” we do not need several verses explaining jealousy or fear. A woman, afraid she is going to lose the man she loves, pleads directly with another woman. Even the repetition of Jolene’s name creates a tension before we even get into the story. Listen to the pleading: “Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene.”

    As someone who can take a while getting into a poem, setting everything up so the reader understands exactly where I am going, that is something I need to remember. Sometimes the story can just begin.

    Dolly also understood how much weight an ordinary item can carry. “Coat of Many Colors,” a song about poverty, family and childhood embarrassment, could have simply told us that Dolly grew up poor but surrounded by love. Instead, she gives us the coat, made by her mother from rags. She talks about how that coat became more than a coat to her: a symbol of not just love but a kind of wealth that money couldn’t buy.

    That is something I have been trying to learn in my own poetry, making an object carry emotion and history. When an image is strong enough, I do not have to stop and explain what it means. A river can carry memory. A loose thread can show something beginning to unravel. A bug left on the floor can become part of a neglected relationship.

    When I find myself writing about emotions such as grief, shame, loneliness, heritage or regret, I tend to explain. I will write a poetic moment then explain in a summary verse or two. I am learning to ask what those things actually look like, and ask what is the story there and what emotion can it carry. Dolly trusted the object, like a coat, and let that object carry the emotional weight through the lyrics.

    Perhaps the lesson I need most from Dolly, though, is restraint like I was learning from the community theatre production in another blog post. When her songs work best, the story earns the emotion, and that is something I need to study in her writing.

    “Down from Dover,” one of her darker story songs, hurts because we watch a young woman wait for someone who is not coming. Dolly does not have to stop the story to explain why abandonment is painful. The waiting shows us. This also goes back to how she paints a picture. Think about this line, how much emotion and information it packs: “The Sun behind a cloud just casts the crawling shadow.” A powerful line that tells me everything I need to know about the woman’s emotions and situation.

    That is something I am still learning. Dolly reminds me that sometimes the story’s images already told us the emotion through action…now we are back at that show don’t tell mantra.

    Also, her characters also tend to be people before they become statements about something larger. Although her songs deal with poverty, love, faith and social expectations, she usually starts with someone living through those things. I don’t have to have an elaborate introduction where I twist language so only a college professor can decode it. I can show a simple person living a life in a simple situation and let that situation speak volumes.

    Maybe what encourages me most about Dolly’s songwriting is the plainness of much of her language. She did not need every line to announce itself as poetry. Often the words sound like someone telling you a story on a front porch. The sophistication is underneath. It is in the structure, the images, the repetition, and what she leaves out.

    As I continue working on my own poetry, I sometimes wonder whether my language is too plain or my poems are too narrative, especially when I read poets whose work pushes language in directions that do not come naturally to me.

    What is she teaching me through her writing? I can make the story stronger, choosing the details that matter and cutting the ones that do not. Easier said than done for me, I know. But if I can find the image that carries the emotion instead of explaining it and trust an ordinary object to become something larger, I can learn when to stop explaining and let the reader feel what is already there.

    Rest in peace, Dolly. Thank you for the songs, the stories, and the lessons I am still learning from them.

  • Thoughts on Restraint in Writing

    Recently, I watched a community theatre production of a popular musical, and while I am not reviewing shows at this time, my critical eye still influenced my thoughts. As I watched these college-age actors perform, I had a realization—one that helped me understand something about writing.

    During the show, I kept watching the two actors playing the adults, and they had a presence and poise that I did not see in the others. It was restraint. They understood how to stand still and have their whole bodies exude emotion, and how to let their voices carry the line without going over the top. With the younger actors, I kept thinking, Dial it back. You are trying too hard.

    That is when I began to think about my own writing and my developing poetic voice. I keep hearing about restraint—that it separates the hobbyist from the published poet.

    Restraint is also what I struggle with the most. I like to be wordy at times, and I like to explain at times. Like the actors on the stage, I tend to try too hard.

    I don’t trust the images and the words of the poem to carry the thought and the emotion. Instead of being too loud or relying on unnatural facial expressions, I repeat the same idea, use a general phrase that sums up the thought, use competing metaphors, or explain the theme.

    Like an actor’s work onstage, it may come across fine. But to the discerning eye, it will be flawed. My writing could be great for casual readers who are not interested in polished poems and just want to enjoy reading it. (I was going to write like the community theatre audience, but that would be my lack of restraint.)

    But I want to be taken seriously by others in the craft. In theatre terms, I want to be onstage at a regional or Broadway theatre, where the professionals play.

    If I want to better my craft, I need to work on restraint. Just like the adult actors on the stage, I need to be able to tell my truth in a quiet stillness without exaggeration, without trying too hard.

  • Writing Thoughts

    I wanted to write songs as long as I can remember, but as a child I did not want to write love songs (I really did not like them). But as I got older, I began writing lyrics and tried to write music. As fate would have it, songwriting was not for me. So I became an English teacher, who became a digital marketer, and now someone who wants to be a poet. Trouble is - the songwriter likes to make appearances way too often and way too often I really love what the songwriter wrote even though it does not belong in a poem. 

I wrote this draft in response to my frustration with writing and editing out the songwriter. It is a very rough draft.

    I love the sweeping statements of a song
    the directness of the chorus
    the poetry hidden inside.
    Then, they invade my poems,
    the little viruses,
    and they become
    my little darlings
    that I just can’t kill,
    making me sound like an alcoholic
    describing the drink;
    I like the way it sounds,
    how it rolls off my tongue.

    I don’t want to release them
    but I should.
    They are little crutches
    to prop me up,
    make me feel better,
    but do nothing for the poem.
    It truly is hard to let go
    of my version of cocaine.

    (C) 2026 Kenny Norton