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.

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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)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Running

source

“Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up, it knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn't matter whether you're the lion or a gazelle-when the sun comes up, you'd better be running.” 

― Christopher McDougall, Born to Run

“Running! If there's any activity happier, more exhilarating, more nourishing to the imagination, I can't think of what it might be. In running the mind flees with the body, the mysterious efflorescence of language seems to pulse in the brain, in rhythm with our feet and the swinging of our arms.” 
― Joyce Carol Oates

source

Midweek Motif ~ Running

I am not a runner and I don't envy runners, but I certainly admire them and watch races when I can.  I imagine what it must feel like to run without my feet touching the ground, flying, faster and faster, wild and free.  

Our Challenge: To write a new poem in the voice of a runner or an observer of runner(s).

source

The Song of the Ungirt Runners

by Charles Hamilton Sorley 

We swing ungirded hips
And lighten’d are our eyes,
The rain is on our lips,
We do not run for prize.
We know not whom we trust
Nor whitherward we fare,
But we run because we must
     Through the great wide air.

The waters of the seas
Are troubled as by storm.
The tempest strips the trees
And does not leave them warm.
Does the tearing tempest pause?
Do the tree-tops ask it why?
So we run without a cause
     ’Neath the big bare sky.

The rain is on our lips,
We do not run for prize.
But the storm the water whips
And the wave howls to the skies.
The winds arise and strike it
And scatter it like sand,
And we run because we like it
    Through the broad bright land.

The Racer

by John Masefield

I saw the racer coming to the jump,
Staring with fiery eyeballs as he rusht,

I heard the blood within his body thump,
I saw him launch, I heard the toppings crusht.

And as he landed I beheld his soul
Kindle, because, in front, he saw the Straight

With all its thousands roaring at the goal,
He laughed, he took the moment for his mate.

Would that the passionate moods on which we ride
Might kindle thus to oneness with the will;

Would we might see the end to which we stride,
And feel, not strain, in struggle, only thrill.

And laugh like him and know in all our nerves
Beauty, the spirit, scattering dust and turves.

my dream about time

BY LUCILLE CLIFTON

a woman unlike myself is running

down the long hall of a lifeless house

with too many windows which open on

a world she has no language for,

running and running until she reaches

at last the one and only door

which she pulls open to find each wall

is faced with clocks and as she watches

all of the clocks strike

                                             NO

🏃🏃🏃

 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 ~  Lust.)