Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Writing Poetry

“A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.”

― Robert Frost

Art by tenth grader Julia Wang from San Jose, California, who has won the inaugural National Poetry Month Poster Contest. Wang’s artwork was selected by contest judges Naomi Shihab Nye and Debbie Millman . . . . It incorporates lines from the poem "An Old Story" by current U. S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith.  
 Read more about Wang’s winning artwork.

“Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.”

― Aristotle

"Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility."   --William Wordsworth

Allegory of Poetry by Francisco Goya

Midweek Motif ~ Writing Poetry

Writing Poetry is what we do. Why?

According to Jane Hirshfeld: 

"One reason to write a poem is to flush from the deep thickets of the self some thought, feeling, comprehension, question, music, you didn’t know was in you, or in the world. Other forms of writing—scientific papers, political analysis, most journalism—attempt to capture and comprehend something known. Poetry is a release of something previously unknown into the visible. You write to invite that, to make of yourself a gathering of the unexpected and, with luck, of the unexpectable."   (Read the rest HERE.)

Is she right?  What is a poem? 

Your Challenge:  In a New poem, tell us Why Write Poetry? and/or What Is Poetry?  Consider limiting yourself to addressing one poem rather than generalizing.

🟍

Last Monday, Sherry gave us Poems of the Week ~ Three Poets on Poetry in which Sanaa, Rajani and Sumana answered that question.  Below I provide a few excerpts of the feature:

In POEM HOLDING ITS HEART IN ONE FIST*, Sanaa notes: 
". . . sometimes it’s better to counsel with our hearts alone. 

I have found that pink buds are perfect within  

and destined to open. . . . "

In THE POET HAS GONE, Sumana notes: 

". . . Things of beauty,  
Scattered everywhere 
Like a Mary Oliver page- 
Yet there’s an uncanny calm . . . ."

And in JUST MATH, Rajani notes:

"Even Rumi, who could fit the entire
universe inside his poem, was yearning
for the grace of the Beloved. The universe
is not enough. . . ."

Poetry Is the Gnomic Utterance from Which the Soul Springs, Fluttering

BY JOYCE CAROL OATES

At the podium

measured and grave as a metronome

the (white, male) poet with bald-

gleaming head broods in gnom-

ic syllables on the death

of 12-year-old (black, male) Tamir Rice

shot in a park

by a Cleveland police officer

claiming to believe

the boy’s plastic pistol

was a “real gun”

like his own eager

to discharge and slay

  

while twelve feet away

at the edge

of the bright-lit stage

the (white, female) interpreter

signing for the deaf is stricken

with emotion —

horror, pity, disbelief —

outrage, sorrow —

young-woman face contorted

and eyes spilling tears

like Tamir Rice’s mother

perhaps, or the sister

made to witness

the child’s bleeding out

in the Cleveland park.

We stare

as the interpreter’s fingers

pluck the poet’s words out of the air

like bullets, break open stanzas

tight as conches with the deft

ferocity of a cormo-

rant and render gnome-speech

raw as hurt, as harm,

as human terror

wet-eyed and mouth-grimaced

in horror’s perfect O.

The Parnassus: The whole room shows the four areas of human knowledge:
philosophy, religion, poetry and law, with The Parnassus representing poetry. 
by Rafael (1511)

Poetry

BY LYDIA HUNTLEY SIGOURNEY

Morn on her rosy couch awoke, 

   Enchantment led the hour, 

And mirth and music drank the dews 

   That freshen’d Beauty’s flower, 

Then from her bower of deep delight, 

   I heard a young girl sing, 

‘Oh, speak no ill of poetry, 

   For ’tis a holy thing.’ 

The Sun in noon-day heat rose high, 

   And on the heaving breast, 

I saw a weary pilgrim toil 

   Unpitied and unblest, 

Yet still in trembling measures flow’d 

   Forth from a broken string, 

‘Oh, speak no ill of poetry, 

   For ’tis a holy thing.’ 

’Twas night, and Death the curtains drew, 

   ’Mid agony severe, 

While there a willing spirit went 

   Home to a glorious sphere, 

Yet still it sigh’d, even when was spread

   The waiting Angel’s wing, 

‘Oh, speak no ill of poetry, 

   For ’tis a holy thing.’

Skyscrapers

by Matt Haig

I

Like

The Way

That when you

Tilt

Poems

On their side

They

Look like

Miniature

Cities

From

A long way

Away. 

Skyscrapers

Made out

Of

Words.

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community—

                (Next week Sumana’s Midweek Motif will be ~ Temptation)

I Wish I'd Written This

Billy Collins is probably my favorite poet.  He gets knocked for being "accessible."  I don't understand why being easily understood when seeing big things in the ordinary is bad.  In the poem below, he shows-off his ability to use simple metaphors with good effect.  The line I most wish I'd written?  This is the thick of things.

Aristotle

By Billy Collins

 

This is the beginning.

Almost anything can happen.

This is where you find

the creation of light, a fish wriggling onto land,

the first word of Paradise Lost on an empty page.

Think of an egg, the letter A,

a woman ironing on a bare stage

as the heavy curtain rises.

This is the very beginning.

The first-person narrator introduces hirnself,

tells us about his lineage.

The mezzo-soprano stands in the wings.

Here the climbers are studying a map

or pulling on their long woolen socks.

This is early on, years before the Ark, dawn.

The profile of an animal is being smeared

on the wall of a cave,

and you have not yet learned to crawl.

This is the opening, the gambit,

a pawn moving forward an inch.

This is your first night with her,

your first night without her.

This is the first part

where the wheels begin to turn,

where the elevator begins its ascent,

before the doors lurch apart.

This is the middle.

Things have had time to get complicated,

messy, really. Nothing is simple anymore.

Cities have sprouted up along the rivers

teeming with people at cross-purposes—

a million schemes, a million wild looks.

Disappointment unshoulders his knapsack

here and pitches his ragged tent.

This is the sticky part where the plot congeals,

where the action suddenly reverses

or swerves off in an outrageous direction.

Here the narrator devotes a long paragraph

to why Miriam does not want Edward's child.

Someone hides a letter under a pillow.

Here the aria rises to a pitch,

a song of betrayal, salted with revenge.

And the climbing party is stuck on a ledge

halfway up the mountain.

This is the bridge, the painful modulation.

This is the thick of things.

So much is crowded into the middle—

the guitars of Spain, piles of ripe avocados,

Russian uniforms, noisy parties,

lakeside kisses, arguments heard through a wall—

too much to name, too much to think about.

And this is the end,

the car running out of road,

the river losing its name in an ocean,

the long nose of the photographed horse

touching the white electronic line.

This is the colophon, the last elephant in the parade,

the empty wheelchair,

and pigeons floating down in the evening.

Here the stage is littered with bodies,

the narrator leads the characters to their cells,

and the climbers are in their graves.

It is me hitting the period

and you closing the book.

It is Sylvia Plath in the kitchen

and St. Clement with an anchor around his neck.

This is the final bit

thinning away to nothing.

This is the end, according to Aristotle,

what we have all been waiting for,

what everything comes down to,

the destination we cannot help imagining,

a streak of light in the sky,

a hat on a peg, and outside the cabin, falling leaves.

 

 

from Picnic, Lightning. Copyright © 1998 by Billy Collins

Click on the title to go to poetryfoundation.org's posting of Aristotle, where you can hear Mr. Collins read this poem.  Click on the poet's name to learn more about Billy Collins.