My excuse

I write mediocre poetry because it's easier than writing mediocre prose. Of course, writing good prose is more time consuming than writing mediocre prose, and writing good poetry is infinitely harder than writing good prose. Is that confusing? I'll clarify in an equation:

(Read "<" as "is easier to write than")
mediocre poetry < mediocre prose < good prose < good poetry

Maybe one of these days i'll get ambitious and try to go a step up to mediocre prose, maybe even good prose . . . but writing good poetry I can only dream of.

My argument boils down to this (after reflecting on Shana's comment about the economy of words.) I feel a (real or imagined) challenge in poetry to pack the most amount of meaning into the fewest number of words. This challenge makes good poetry hard to write. For good prose, on the other hand, you need meaningful words, but you have the luxury of cushioning them with a few meaningless ones. Add too many meaningless words and you've dropped to mediocre prose. Mediocre poetry is easy; all you need are a few meaningless words, and they're easier to find than a keg at a frat party.

That's my excuse. What's yours?