Consider your audience, consider yourself as your own audience.

Consider the title to your poem. What does it say that draws the reader in? What is that first line that
is skillful, unique and would tempt the reader to go beyond the first line without groans and moans or to
stop reading it in mid-sentence because it lacks even rudimentary wordsmithing. Is it the same old
same old, rewritten a thousand times, and much better by a thousand and one poets? Do you really
think you only have an audience of one in your head?

Promise yourself one thing today, that you'll read a poet that may not have been amoung your favourites,
(or you've never read before) just to breathe life into your work. Sit back and then be inspired. Order
a book of poetry from a poet that floats your boat, go to the library and pick up any book of poems, you'd be surprised at what you find, and how much you are so like a sponge. Remember that life is more than enough inspiration, one has to be open to it all.

Randomly select a poem here. http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/ or here. http://www.poets.org/c

Release the Kraken! Release the god whose mouth you have bound by your own hands, confined by
your own discipline and fear. Be who you truly already are or could be, were it not for the beast contained within.
And for Pete's sake, distinguish between polite applause from friends and something that really "rocks the casbah.

~Anna