Midweek Motif: The Joy of Poetry

"Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance."

Carl Sandburg

  

"A poet is a nightingale,

who sits in darkness and sings

to cheer its own solitude

with sweet sounds."

Percy Bysshe Shelley

"We write to taste life twice,

in the moment, and in retrospect."

Anais Nin

"A poet doesn't write because she has a solution.
She writes because she has hope."
Hannah Gosselin

Midweek Motif : The Joy of Poetry

Why do we write poems? What do we love about writing them? What keeps us writing? What do we hope for, when we pen our poems?

Our challenge: to write about poetry, 

any facet of it that appeals 

to your imagination. 
I offer two examples, for your inspiration.

Poetry by Pablo Neruda

And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.


I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names,
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire,
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.



And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
for myself a pure part of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.


(Translated from the Spanish by Alastair Reid)

I came across this other cool statement about poetry just the other day. Ms Alexander is currently the chair of African American studies at Yale. You can find out more about this highly accomplished poet here, and here, if you wish. She has written a memoir called The Light of the World, which looks very intriguing, about the sudden death of her husband. She says while it begins with what looks like a catastrophe, it is a love story. My kind of book! I love her voice in this poem.

Ars Poetica #100: I Believe

Poetry, I tell my students,
is idiosyncratic. Poetry

is where we are ourselves
(though Sterling Brown said

“Every ‘I’ is a dramatic ‘I'”),
digging in the clam flats

for the shell that snaps,
emptying the proverbial pocketbook.

Poetry is what you find
in the dirt in the corner,

overhear on the bus, God
in the details, the only way

to get from here to there.
Poetry (and now my voice is rising)

is not all love, love, love,
and I’m sorry the dog died.

Poetry (here I hear myself loudest)
is the human voice,

and are we not of interest to each other?

            - Elizabeth Alexander

Please share your poem using Mr. Linky below 

and visit others in the spirit of the community.   

(Next week Sherry's Midweek Motif will be Watershed Moments)