On Poetry

I've been thinking about including something about poetry in a couple of talks I am giving in May. As I consider this idea, I have been reading and rereading poetry.  Really, I use this excuse to spend lots of time exploring all these poetry books and websites and generally not doing the things I should be doing. like matching socks.  Actually, my mother-in-law has let me down lately by not coming over to match socks every Wednesday.  What could be holding her up, I wonder?  What could possibly be more rewarding?  I've become quite used to having piles of perfectly matched socks waiting for me when I get home.....I'll have to get her moving on this again.  I mean come on, now that she has decided to get completely well after a long stay in the hospital and rehab, it is time for her to pick up her duties, I think.

 In the meantime, I'm considering why I have found poetry so helpful in so many parts of my life.  I believe it has enabled me to become so very much more reflective, and to take time to allow meaning to bubble up to the surface and shine forth.  I am often surprised at what I have learned while writing or reading poetry.  I guess this is particularly so when I actually try to write.  At work, we have been reading and discussing what it is that the act of writing can do to help students learn about themselves and their reactions, and to grow and even change.  I see first hand the power of reflection and meaning making for me.  I have begun to collect a bunch of poems about poetry by different authors.  I go back to these to help me put words to the feeling that there is something quite special about poetry; every author sings poetry's praises it in their own unique way.  Ok, I think Katie and her friend have a little poetry going on  in this picture, too. See what you think of some of these poems:

Introduction to Poetry

Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

Poetry (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 the 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,

felt myself a pure part

of the abyss,

I wheeled with the stars,

my heart broke loose on the wind.

Briefly It Enters, and Briefly Speaks
by Jane Kenyon
I am the blossom pressed in a book, found again after two hundred years. . . . I am the maker, the lover, and the keeper. . . . When the young girl who starves sits down to a table she will sit beside me. . . . I am food on the prisoner's plate. . . . I am water rushing to the wellhead, filling the pitcher until it spills. . . . I am the patient gardener of the dry and weedy garden. . . . I am the stone step, the latch, and the working hinge. . . . I am the heart contracted by joy. . . the longest hair, white before the rest. . . . I am there in the basket of fruit presented to the widow. . . . I am the musk rose opening unattended, the fern on the boggy summit. . . . I am the one whose love overcomes you, already with you when you think to call my name. . . . This Was Once a Love Poem by Jane Hirshfield This was once a love poem, before its haunches thickened, its breath grew short, before it found itself sitting, perplexed and a little embarrassed, on the fender of a parked car, while many people passed by without turning their heads. It remembers itself dressing as if for a great engagement. It remembers choosing these shoes, this scarf or tie. Once, it drank beer for breakfast, drifted its feet in a river side by side with the feet of another. Once it pretended shyness, then grew truly shy, dropping its head so the hair would fall forward, so the eyes would not be seen. IT spoke with passion of history, of art. It was lovely then, this poem. Under its chin, no fold of skin softened. Behind the knees, no pad of yellow fat. What it knew in the morning it still believed at nightfall. An unconjured confidence lifted its eyebrows, its cheeks. The longing has not diminished. Still it understands. It is time to consider a cat, the cultivation of African violets or flowering cactus. Yes, it decides: Many miniature cacti, in blue and red painted pots. When it finds itself disquieted by the pure and unfamiliar silence of its new life, it will touch them—one, then another— with a single finger outstretched like a tiny flame.