Introduction

Yesterday, Saturday, February 26, 2005, I was on a poetry web-site, browsing. It is called The International Library of Poetry, and the company is physically located in Owings Mills, Maryland. They sponsor all kinds of poetry contests, and many years ago, a couple of my pieces were published in their anthologies. Way back then, I was less learned, or more naive' and did not realize that their operation, while quite impressive, is also probably the closest thing akin to a "Vanity Press."

The primary difference being, that instead of you paying to have your own book published, they ‘select' your poem, get your signed permission, include it in their hard-bound anthology, BUT - you will never actually SEE it, UNLESS you buy a copy of the book, which I did - ONCE! It is really a very smooth operation, and I would guess, a very profitable business. Anyway, they sponsor many contests, during each year, including both ‘Monthly' and "Daily' ones.

As I had not visited this site for a long time, perhaps a year or more, I spent a good time browsing. First, I submitted a poem for the monthly contest, after ‘massaging' and shortening it, in order to comply with their word and line restrictions. Next, I clicked on the daily contest, to see how it worked. Actually, it was a challenge and fun to do.

It is set up just like the little ‘magnets' of words, quite similar to those you place on your refrigerator, or maybe the file cabinet at work. I'm guessing that maybe a couple of hundred of these little ‘words' are squeezed onto this little board. You have to select ONLY TWENTY words or less, moving them down onto the larger field with your ‘mouse.' They are so crammed together, some on top of one another, two or three deep, that you need to ‘pull' some out of the way, just to see what is underneath. Then, you arrange, re-arrange, and place these words as you see fit, ultimately trying to create a new poem. There are no restrictions as to style, or format, so your mind can frequently change, especially as you ‘discover' a better choice, which was buried below before.

Thus, Dear Readers, the following little free verse was birthed. As I gingerly worked on moving those little words, to and fro, my "mind's eye" visualized a picture. As this visualization had no motion, like a movie, or video tape, and seemed to capture a brief moment in time, it was more like a frozen nanosecond, in time and space. As I kept counting and re-counting the number of words I had chosen, realized there were too many, then I had to carefully delete those making the total over twenty. CRAP!

As a writer, you know how difficult this is, right? You just created this absolutely wonderful, perfect little ‘piece' and someone says: "It's too long - shorten it!" OUCH! How that hurts! These creative ‘juices' are flowing now, and we don't want to "throw the baby out with the wash-water" do we? Nevertheless, RULES IS RULES! So, like a deft, careful surgeon, using a high-tech laser beam, or a scalpel even, we slowly and judiciously, and precariously - CARVE!

I'm guessing that this process took me a good forty-five minutes to an hour, to complete. Considering that I rarely do write ‘free verse' preferring to be a ‘rhymester' I'm naturally curious as to what others may think of it. Oh, I considered many other choices for the title: Captured, Frozen, Solitude, Lonely Flyer, and more, but after pondering for a modicum of time, I finally decided on the more generic title, "Snapshot." Please feel free to comment, and let me know what you think - OK? Can you SEE him? HER? I also highly recommend that you at least try the exercise yourself, who knows, you might even win a hundred bucks!