An Alchemy of Words

Introduction

~ new poems released every friday ~

An Alchemy of Words

a book of poetry by Rob Bartel

Welcome

Thanks for finding me on Wattpad. Be sure to follow me or add this to your reading lists as I'll be publishing more of my poems to this collection every Friday. Some are new creations but many have been coursing through my veins for a quarter century now. Publishing them here is an act of rediscovery and a chance for me to reconnect with my roots, draw new inspiration, and discover new audiences.

Some have been published previously. Some have won awards. Others poems are ones that, due to time or place or subject matter, I've chosen to keep to myself and they've never seen the light of day. And, along the way, I'll try do a little bit of storytelling in my author's notes to give you a peek at what goes on behind the curtain, between the poet and the muse.

Feedback, Criticism, Typos

Consider me the King of Typos. I've made ten million of them and sent nine million to their deaths. In particular, if two words within a sentence begin with the same letter, my brain will often skip right over typing all the precious words that lie between. And don't even get me started talking about auto-correct. So where you see a mistake, please flag it with a comment. Every time you do that, know that it's a gift--one that I value and appreciate. As writers, our eyes are often blind to the errors in our work because our brains only let us see the words that are already in our heads.

And while I'll show no patience or mercy for trolls, know that any honest, well-intentioned criticism is always welcome. We may not always agree but criticism makes poems (and poets) better. Where you have kind words, I'll take those, too. And, once the typos are all gone and when you lack the time or strength for words, don't forget the little orange star--every vote goes a long way towards helping others discover and enjoy my work.

A Hint for Those Who've Made it This Far
I use physical space and intentional line breaks as a form of punctuation for a lot of my poems, which can sometimes be impacted by line wrapping. If reading on your phone, consider reading them in landscape mode to get the full effect.

About the Art

The art that I've collected for this publication is not my own. I hope, like me, you find it evocative and atmospheric, that you revel in its abstraction from a distance and then draw closer when you catch glimpses of something real and tangible that you can feel lurking there within. Who is the artist? Well that's where it gets complicated.

All of the art in this collection has been generated by artificial intelligence. You can discover it for yourself at thisartworkdoesnotexist.com. Michael Friesen is listed as the chap who built the site and I'm guessing he might have even worked with the data and trained the algorithms. But the code behind the algorithms has probably been cobbled together from 20 different sources (all of them freely shared). And who created the millions of pieces of artwork that were fed to it as data? We may never truly be able to say who is truly the artist here. But, for now, we'll just say it's (c) Michael Friesen | This Artwork Does Not Exist.

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But enough talk. Time for some poetry...

💌📬 Rob