Reason to Be Happy #410:
Writing Poetry
Today I am pleased as punch to offer a guest blog from a writer friend of mine. I met Ed Davis years and years ago (I won't...ahem...say just how many) when we were in a writing group together. He is the author of the novels I Was So Much Older Then and The Measure of Everything, as well as the poetry chapbooks Haskell and Whispering Leaves, and many short stories. He's one of those writers who is crazy good at reading his own work. I would happily sit and listen to him read for hours. You can find out lots more about him at his website. Ed blogs here about writing poetry, but the reasons he lists are mostly true of reading poetry, as well. I recently shared with a writing class that part of my morning writing warmup is to read two or three poems. I look forward to reading Ed's poems when Time of the Light, his new collection, releases this November. In the meantime, please read his wonderful blog on writing poetry below:
Reason
to be Happy: Writing Poetry
Rumi and Rilke,
Lennon and McCartney, the Psalms of David . . . ah,
poetry!
Like Katrina, I’m a novelist, but one who also writes poetry. I
once thought I couldn’t “serve two muses,” and I quit writing
poems in favor of writing stories exclusively. But I couldn’t avoid
those moments that screamed
poetry. And what
is it
about poetry, you might ask?
Reason #1
Writing poetry gives me intoxicating
pleasure even purer than fiction. You don’t need all the
infrastructure of plot and characterization. All you need is image,
language and rhythm, mainlined into your veins and shot
straight to your head and heart.
Reason #2
Writing poetry has taught me what the
stuff really is: mostly something I feel in my gut rather than in my
head. Meaning is subordinate to music. Even when I don’t get it—or
even like it—I recognize it. And to hear and to read it was, for
me, to want to write it, which I’ve been doing for about
thirty-five years now.
Reason #3
Using language to make poetry is a
whole “other thing” than prose. I live for the music of word and
line, whatever the breath can encompass. True, prose can be luscious,
poetic to a greater or lesser degree, but pure poetry is the closest
to heaven that words ever get.
Reason #4
Writing poetry perfectly complements
the spiritual inspiration I find in the woods. Being among rocks,
trees and streams takes me to the place where my Higher Power and I
commune most closely. The confluence of nature and poetry gives me
great joy—and sometimes yields poems I want to share with others.
Reason #5
Writing poetry connects me to a vital
community. Poetry-Land is a parallel universe, easily accessed.
Readings are all over the place, from bars and coffee shops to
libraries and prisons. Also, through poetry I’ve forged ties with
poets all over the country.
Reason #6
Writing poetry also brought me the gift
of public performance. For a long time, I thought I could never
share such intimate words and experiences. And yet, if the holy has
happened—as it so often does in the composition process—the
result will, like liturgy, bless both writer and the listener with
astonishing joy.
Now you . . .
Once you start watching for it, poetry
will find you. And that’s only a step away from you perhaps
writing your own poems. They could even become indispensable. “These
Poems,” a poem which came to me one day in Glen Helen Nature
Preserve, seems to think so:
I’ve left these poems behind
a hundred million times,
lying in ditches, tossed
thoughtlessly from speeding cars,
buried deep on cemetery ridges.
But these poems . . .
Never left me.
God willing, they never will.
