Poetry For Prose

Have you ever given writing poetry a try?

Back in my pre-teen days I was really fond of writing song parodies (I blame Mad Magazine) and over the years, I’ve continued to write what I laughingly call poetry and song lyrics. I even had one of them made into a song, but then the composer changed it so much only the ‘hook’ was still recognizable as mine. I write haiku in both traditional (referencing the season obliquely) and non-traditional ways, dirty limericks (I won a contest once!), but often my poetry is an outgrowth of a line that came to me and demanded to be built upon (or around).

I’m not a good poet.

I was a pre-law major (with a minor in history) at uni and never took an advanced literature class. All I know about constructing poetry is what I have read on my own and I couldn’t tell a sonnet from a trimeric if my cliché depended on it.

But I still write poetry and for reasons other than because I want to.

I also do it because it’s a great exercise in humility -going through the process of writing a poem is eye-opening. Maybe like the first time you tried a short story and found the form is actually harder than writing a novel. Since most poems are shorter than a short story, your ability to edit really gets a work out. For another thing, writing poetry has taught me a lot about struggling to find just the right word and just the right phrase. And it’s taught me about brevity (mind you, I may not have learned this lesson well). Poetry gives great lessons in rhythm and precision. If you’ve never given it a try, think about doing so. In the meantime, read some poetry. It’s good stuff.

My Work In Progress

Here’s something I wrote in response to a challenge from a poet on #LitChat. I’m still working on it, so constructive critique is welcome:

Blades

At the park I sink down,
My head on my arm
Sunlight searing through me
Will to lose feeling
Liquify
Dissolve
Food for ants
and roly-poly bugs

Dandelions will pierce
the brittle cloth of my shirt
sowing their seeds for future outrage
on desiccated flesh

I will be a temporary stain
a yellowed shadow on the green
person-shaped and worthy of remark
at last

Be still…

Still…

Still…

Irritating
The grass is irritating

Indifferent teeth bite
without eating

Death denied mundanely through an itch

Sitting up I see,
though crushed
they wounded
Victory through defeat

No dandelions for me

I leave the park
carrying the marks of blades

When Did You Know You Were a Writer?

If you’ve been writing a long time, as I have, you probably don’t remember what it was like not to hear voices in your head. But I don’t remember any of them telling me to write anything down. Most of the time they have been having conversations or making soliloquies without any regard for me at all. When I was younger, I sometimes wondered if I had one of those fillings where you pulled in radio stations to hear in your head. But the conversations or monologues would fade out and – until I started writing comedy skits – there were never any commercials.

For the longest time, I did nothing about these conversations. I grew up with books when my mother was in the house, but when she left, so did the books. My father never subscribed to magazines (I don’t think that nudist colony one my sister found in his closet one time really counts), and there were no libraries within walking distance. We only got the Sunday paper and I never had the nerve to ask my dad if I could read it after him. Ours was not a free and easy household, and it would never have occurred to me to ask for anything, although I might have been pleasantly surprised if I had.

I had started reading at 3, but between the ages of 5 and 10 had very little in the way of material that didn’t come on the back of a cereal box or from a school textbook. I had no idea that I might have a facility for words – I didn’t talk much in school – until we began to write essays later on. My writing career might have started then, but I didn’t know there were such things as notebooks or pads of paper. No one suggested it to me and like a little tin doll, I waited for someone to wind me up and get me going. Except for some rather peculiar exceptions, I was a very passive child, waiting patiently to be told what I was allowed or not allowed to do with my life. I was like an elephant who had been trained to stay tethered and had been tethered for so long that a mere piece of string would serve to keep me in place. I was fortunate that my life did not stay that way.

When did I know I was a writer? I never did. I still do not. The closest I have come is accepting that writing and I – after a rather rocky start and some bumpy side roads – are inseparable.

Some part of me feels that I am still in the process of becoming, which isn’t something that I mind. As with art – another thing I came to later than I might have – I have learned to value the journey towards the completion of a project more than the completion itself.

Now I no longer wonder whether I have anything to say, but whether what I have to say is worth saying aloud.