Lately I’ve caught the poetry bug again. Like most people, I used to write a lot of what could jokingly be called ‘free verse’ back in high school and college. My younger brother used to tell me the poor things sounded like ‘an old man sitting on top of a mountain, speaking dooms’. He wasn’t wrong – they were pretty awful. Later, I put out a whole rash of poems when I was dating the girl who would become my wife. Some of them were not awful. She still just smiles at me and says, ‘your heart was in the right place’. Damning by faint praise…
I’ve turned out a very few poems since then. One or two of them even had some sadly stunted rhymes involved. Meter? Not so much. As with many other aspects of my creative journey, it was difficult to be artistic while I was insane – a matter of some 20 years or so. So, not a lot of progress in any area. As I have healed, my arts are coming back to me – poetry among them. But none of my arts have escaped my distraction and neglect unscathed. I find myself starting over – sometimes from zero – with every artistic pursuit. Can’t be helped.
Poetry is just the latest to rise from somnolence. Prose writing – especially novels and short stories – was first, followed eventually by visual art. Now poetry and sculpture are waking up. My vocal music has limped along for years, and while I could do theatre even while insane, I haven’t been in front of the footlights for a decade. All of that is changing now. And it brings up a new question: When am I going to find time to do all this? I have related elsewhere in this blog how difficult it is to find time to write. But the ideas are rising in me, and they will not be denied.
If I’m going to do this – if I’m actually going to write poetry – I feel the need to do it right, at long last. That means not just ‘free verse’ (i.e. – throwing words at a page and calling it poetry), but actually following the conventions and formats for the various types of poem. Now, rhyming doesn’t seem all that difficult on the face of it, but meter is something else again. I suppose most of that, plus word choice and imagery, can be hammered out in the editing process. But beyond that, each poetic form has its own conventions, and some are downright bizarre.
Have you ever read a Sestina? It’s a strange, but mathematically precise form – which already has my little antennae a-twitching. Or, how about a villanelle? I’d never even heard of this form until recently, but apparently the poem Do not go gentle into that good night, by Dylan Thomas, is an example of a villanelle. The rhyme and meter schemes are torturous but produce a gorgeous result. And the sonnet form is just daunting. Any one of the three. I figure I may cut my teeth on a couple of haikus and a limerick or two before I attempt anything in that range.
But, aside from the sheer challenge of the thing, why write poetry? Well, partly for what I think it can do for my prose. No less a light than Ray Bradbury insisted that prose authors should read poetry every day. He claimed that the beauty and the clarity of expression would leak over into your prose. Writing poetry should have an even stronger influence. It teaches you how to distill your imagery and clarify the mood in whatever you write. Prose writers tend to wander and sniff at rabbit holes too much. Poets don’t have that liberty, but in exchange, they become more incisive. Finally, it’s just a nice break from prose writing, while still keeping you at work.
Okay, I took the leap and wrote a simple haiku –
Tall grass crickets drone
Warm sunlight caresses skin
Lazy summertime
Alright, it’s not Basho. But it’s also not horrible, I think. I’m kinda stupidly proud of it. It hits the 5-7-5 scheme and is even somewhat indicative of a mood. I started with a childhood image and took it from there. If I end up writing a bunch of these, or of limericks, or really any kind of poetry – I’ll be sure to include them under their own heading on the site.
It seems to me that the technical side of poetry, while challenging, is not the most difficult part. The real problem of poetry seems to be holding onto a mood or an image long enough to get it at least sketched out. In that sense, it really is a lot like a quick sketch in a drawing journal. I know that if I don’t get the image out on the paper fast enough, or if I get interrupted halfway through, I lose the thread. Things seemed much simpler when I was young.
When I was a kid, it was easy to sit down and draw or paint or write for hours. Part of the reason I had so much free time was that I ignored my homework, usually. But I think a major reason for all the freedom was that I lived in a small town, with few distractions and not much TV worth watching. I didn’t play sports, so in order to keep boredom at arm’s length, I learned to invent things. I created something nearly every day. It was wonderful. I miss it.
Now I feel I must find my way back to that pre-teen artist I used to be. It can be difficult for an adult to do more than just reminisce about the past. Instead, I need to find ways to drag the past into the present, but with upgrades. If I can manage to invest my days and nights with the same simple feelings, joy in nature and hunger to create that I had in my youth – you might see a lot more poetry come out of me. It’s worth a try.
Be well.
bcd