I’ve been wrestling with this poetry thing for weeks now. Trying to get the right connections made on my mind’s switchboard it seems. My perception of poetry has changed rapidly. Once I thought that it was a physical thing as groups of words on the paper. Then I thought that it was a language which was appropriate for the occasion. But now at this moment where I am I see it as a space or an environment or a world. The phrase came up the other day “poetry jungle”. There is something to that for me.
Steve our Northwest Bureau Chief sent this in the comments:
“But, yeah, things come and go and come around again and oftentimes the points of that yearly compass seem to be surprise, appear as a reminder we forgot to expect. But it’s a Hope thing, right? How does it meld and mesh with poetry? The comes-and-goes-and-comes-back-again part, for certain. But also the “Wait. Just Stop and know what point of the yearly compass you are on, what things look like from right here, right now. It’s slightly different that the last time you checked. Be aware of where you are, big picture, in the scheme of things.” part, too.
Just stop. Though it feels like time to ramp up in some ways, in planning and in doing – and maybe it is. So, all the more need to Just Stop before plunging ahead. And where, exactly to light when I stop, in my universe of sometimes-practiced habits and behaviors? In poetry. To both alight and delight in poetry. It’s there to discover and to write. There to give aid and guidance to the Just Stop event. It is timeless as it glides through our minds, finding its place and meaning in some niche we have waiting for it. Allowing the greater-than-us light of awareness settle in with the rest of who we are. Delightful, huh?”
On we go loves, Felipé.
“For most people, poetry is a solitary affair, like meditation or prayer” (Bill Moyers) Edward Hirsch describes it “a passionately private communication from a soul to another soul.” But, poetry is not only an act between consenting poet and reader, it is a public act as well. Poems can work their magic on thousands of people all at once. The effect can be physical, like the ‘breathless arousal’ that attended religious revivals in my native south.” (Bill Moyers) Yeats once said that, “rhetoric is the argument you have with others, poetry the argument you have with yourself.” “Because f you weren’t arguing with yourself, figuring something out for yourself or working through some issue that’s pressing itself upon your life – you could probably rest quite happy in silence. But because there is a fertile dilemma, a rich imbalance somewhere in your life, or heart, or understanding, you write a poem.” (Bill Moyers)
Just a few thoughts on poetry for you to chew on this rainy, cold, gray day. Write on Pilgrim, write on.
xo
Catherine ~ wonderful collection of views. I like the “fertile dilemma” and the “rich imbalance”. That is what I see everyday. I think this is the poetry jungle that I have just discovered. It is fertile and maybe too fertile. Stuff squirting out all over the place.
I don’t see my endeavor as a solitary deal like something that is only valid in seventeenth century candlelight. I am trying to communicate with ALL cancer patients everywhere. It is maybe raw and gritty just like our lives. So glad that you’re u are close at hand for me the Felipé. The Felipé.x