High Fives All-Around!

"Each word bears its weight, so you have to read my poems quite slowly." ~ Anne Stevenson

I like this quote because it reminds me of the whole matter of word economy in poetry. I often need to remind myself the importance of this to poetry. It is not so much that I have a struggle with it as it is that it just needs to remain on the forefront of my mind.

It has occurred to me that this is a concept that really goes against the grain of my normal mode of communication. With ADD the tendency is to verbalize everything that is going through your mind. Hence, I will often give a person more information than needed in the course of a conversation. As I write this, I'm thinking my wife would likely ask me, "then how come I can write poems with less wordage and not do the same in our conversations?" It is a good question and I suspect the major factor is that we speak in conversations much faster than we write. Writing slows us and of course besides taking more time to choose the best words, we have the ability to re-write.

I do have some good news. Last week I was flipping through the mail and there is one of my self-addressed envelopes.

So I'm reading along... " We are pleased to inform you that your work has been accepted for publication in the 2006 issue..."
and all of a sudden, I realize this is not a rejection letter! I could get into the joy of receiving these much better than the other variety.

Free Speech & Poetry

"In our period, they say there is free speech. They say there is no penalty for poets, There is no penalty for writing poems. They say this. This is the penalty."~ Muriel Rukeyser

April 18th Poet's Quote

I'll love you, dear, I'll love you till China and Africa meet and the river jumps over the mountain and the salmon sing in the street. ~ W. H. Auden


* Happy Birthday to my wife Cathy Jean

The Way You Carry Yourself

The Way You Carry Yourself
For Cathy Jean

You wear your flannelness
in that laid back way
that fits you pleasantly.

Conformity seems unimportant
and you prove it like you would
work a math problem backwards.

I swear, you give it utmost validity;
a blossoming art hung out of self-assurance
in an off the path gallery-

If two people find it appealing,
you are satisfied. An if no one sees it,
it's all just the same.

But I would hold you in any fabric,
just as you are, and I would press
your nakedness to mine

in nothing at all,
as the creator herself
has become a treasure of art.

A search for order

"For me, poetry is always a search for order." ~ Elizabeth Jennings

It seems that as we go through life, the very process of living is in itself a natural disordering process. We read the paper, it ends up with sections missing or A between E and D and the Movie section folded inside out. Or we get up in the morning and the bed covering is all out of kelter. And so life moves through the day being lived, being sort of misshapen if you will. We stop at various points to re-order our lives. But we know full well these are temporary shifts in the sand of life, and like the wheat in a Kansas field, it will again move with each breeze.

Elizabeth Jennings has touched upon a most human instinctive facet of poetry. Poetry often speaks to my own need to pause and get things right. To find and reorder life. To find that emotion that resides deep within. You know it is there and cannot begin tell or explain it, even to the one you are closest to in life, for want of words. For perfect description. Your mind and soul searches for that ordering and until you find it - until a poem speaks it to you and you have that ah-ha! realization - it remains locked deep within.

Sometimes it's through my own writing that these things come about. Still, at other times it is the words of another poet that provide a key to this ordering, this finding the right words or image to complete the emotional translation. And so it is that we become better aware and in that greater awareness, now have the ability to put our deepest fears or longing desires, or greater joys and utmost delights into the right words and best order to achieve most precise meaning.

tags: Writing and poetry Poetry

Poet's Quote - Wallace Stevens

"A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman." ~ Wallace Stevens

Poet's Quote ~ Bryant H. McGill

"Creativity is the greatest expression of liberty. " ~Bryant H. McGill