Why Not Devour A Poem?

What is a poem? Is it lines in meter, or rhyming words? There are so many things a poem is - and isn't. Words can be wonderful prose, but in my opinion, without a soul of its own a poem simply isn't.

For me a poem can touch the heart or can give us thought for up to the next week! One such worker of words is Wilfred Owen. His poem DULCE ET DECORUM EST, (a Latin phrase from a poem by Homer) written during World War I is graphic and poetic at the same time. He experienced the gruesomeness of that war first hand as a soldier and died as the war ended. Though uncomfortable, it puts you right in that place that many soldiers live while at war.

But why get stuck there? The light poems also give images that can give me pause. One such poem is small and descriptive. Carl Sandberg was a Chicago native with a love of his city and of nature. My favorite poem of his is centered on a weather phenomenon that many of us see but seldom envision as an animal. His poem Fog fits the silence and mystery that a cloud seeping through any city is like a curious cat that sits watching, and then walks on to somewhere else.

Small or large, visionary or grisly these words we call poems can organize into huge thoughts of a few precise words that can take someone to another part of town, or to a totally different world. For me they often give a sense of escape or of getting to know someone new - but that's why I love to devour them!

Words....

It's the sleepy, rub your eyes time of night, and here I sit gazing at a glowing screen that shifts colors as I page through the various sites I frequent daily. I think I am more than a bit too addicted to this little box and tower that stands on my desk, but I love to write, and so I expand my words from one side of this electronic world to the other.

Why do I write? A difficult question...but one I have to answer each time I sit here before the magic box to create in my own personal colors and images that all come out in black on white.

I write because the thoughts keep coming, because I need to empty my mind to be able to capture that elusive thing called sleep on any given night of the week. But mostly I write because I love the sound of the words as they bang out on that keyboard where the letters have all been rubbed off from use, and have returned back onto my own fingers to return and race around my mind only to find a new way to explode out again in those sights and sounds splashed on another page...again, tomorrow.

Squinchy, Tasty Words

I’m slow in making decisions. I’m not afraid to make them, I simply just like to mull over all ways they might affect life. One of my friends say I tend to over analyze things, and she’s probably right, but I love the let them roll around like a lovely word to feel the way it moves and feels in my mouth. Yup, I word crazy too.

If you can taste food, you can taste a word. It can taste sweet or sour…or feel prickly, or smooth. Let me give an example. Take a word that sounds good to you – for me that might be a word that tantalizes the mind and the tongue. It might be a word like bamboozle or extraordinary. It’s not only that they can have a rhythm, but my tongue actually tingles with an excitement to find ways to use them. New words I’ve learned have a grand way of exciting my mind and take me to a place where those words stand alone like buildings in some huge elongated city.

Words can sometimes have faces, and smiles - and even personalities too! They can take you on imaginary journeys that roll down a huge chain and rail hill, or deep within a faeirie’s mind. They can stand alone simply by saying them out loud or slowly, or with different kind of cadence that marches around the room. The most wonderful way words creates a specific flavor for me is through poetry. There the words can create an image and a taste.

One such poem that really makes my mouth water is an easy one to taste by Galway Kinnell called

Blackberry Eating.

I love the squinch and picture of those icy, black blackberries that he invokes with each line. If you listen, and close your eyes you can begin to almost taste those magnificent berries.

What words can create memories for us, or can vividly take us to a place both real and imaginary? Some come in the form of a well told story, when words fall off the page and become cities and houses and people. A good writer can take us somewhere we’ve never been, and create a village or home that we can experience to the point of reaching through that created reality to touch the cheek of an elf or mediaeval farmer in the warmth of a newly plowed spring field.

That is why words – or a simple turn of a phrase can create worlds, and all manner of creatures to haunt my thoughts daily. Tomorrow I may be off to ancient Britain or into the unknown future. I may find myself standing next to Sherlock Holmes on Baker Street as the mists of a London evening cloak the world and I must be bundled against that damp, cold story.

You know, I really love the journeys that words can create, and the paths they can take me down. They are my flying ships of dreams and imaginings that can give a scrumptious and quite satisfying meal for my imagination when life needs a little push to make it enjoyable.

Writing and More Writing!

What makes a blog important enough to make it to the best of the best, or the most evocative, or even the most interesting? Is it the content or how the author creates the string of words that complete the thought within what is written? Questions, questions, questions...as a writer I have had to look at what is interesting in what I read and what I write. I think on most blog pages it's how far can you go in anger or word use not in what is actually said. Does that mean that a theological treatise or anything else academic is better? Heavens NO! The other end of the scale can be just as frustrating as those that try to shock us. So what makes something a good piece of writing? In my opinion well thought out and developed ideas that take you from an idea to a conclusion of some kind. A piece that has an interesting way of grabbing attention at the beginning and holding it throughout with humor or using a different way of presenting ideas can capture and hold a reader's interest.

For me, someone who is well informed and not simply angry gives me a reason to continue to read on in any piece of writing. Some of the best writings that I've experienced have often been to persuade me to change an opinion or idea that I hold. It doesn't always make me change, but it does always make me re-examine what I believe and that is what a good persuasive piece of writing should do.

Without humor or something that catches you off guard most writing has little to peak my interest. An example for me is a very well know writer of literature who has a good way of taking you in circles with her descriptions but leaves you hanging as to a purpose for the piece, or simply a story line that will take the reader into a piece. Though wonderful at taking a reader into the character the author seems to be going in circles as to what they are saying or why. Every author has a purpose; a reason for writing. Many of us do it to blow off steam or tell of wrongs done in our world. How many of us write to tell of someone or something that has touched us in our days?

A good writer is not always grammatically correct, but they are always true to the characters, or ideas that hold their own interest. I'm a writer because I love to see where my ideas are going on a page, and always they grow like children on my page. That's like life. Each day they grow, and change with each telling. Not because we're changing them, but often because as we contemplate what happened from our own perspectives more information comes to light. We each have our own truths and they become what we believe. That occurs through what happens in our lives. As for me...I may not be a Hemmingway, or Faulkner but I too must write. It is for me simply a way of thinking and communicating.