 Poetry: September 02, 2020 Issue [#10350] |
This week: Where Does the Poem Live? Edited by: Fyn  
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The best way out is always through. ~~Robert Frost
The same words conceal and declare the thoughts of men. ~~Alfred Lord Tennyson
To see a world in a grain of sand
and heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
and eternity in an hour. ~~William Blake
If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive. ~~Audre Lorde
The poetry of the earth is never dead. ~~John Keats
There's never a new fashion but it's old. ~~Geoffrey Chaucer
History is a cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man. ~~Percy Bysshe Shelley
The poem is not, as someone put it, deflective of entry. But the real question is, 'What happens to the reader once he or she gets inside the poem?' That's the real question for me, is getting the reader into the poem and then taking the reader somewhere, because I think of poetry as a kind of form of travel writing. ~~Billy Collins
Reading, like writing, is a creative act. If readers only bring a narrow range of themselves to the book, then they'll only see their narrow range reflected in it. ~~Ben Okri
I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it.
I want to have lived the width of it as well. ~~Diane Ackerman
Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn. ~~Thomas Gray
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Where does a poem live? On the page captured in ink or paint or blood? Does it exist merely between the lines or is it flattened between ancient sheaves? Perhaps scribbled on a tenement wall? Tattoed skin deep? Does it live in a moment or an eternity? Does it draw its first beath upon the thinking or the writing? Or is it in the telling, the reading, the repeating?
Does it live just in the poet? Or is the poem transferred, by transfusion, into a reader? Is it that thought-- that mental string of letters modified,
torn to shreds, swallowed whole, vomited and then spit into the wind--
that just is the poem?
Does it gain substance for indeed words have weight? Does it float like dandelion-fluff waltzing off to distant minds: where it might root in fallow ground or be trampled by the stampede into the mud-- where it still might flourish?
Upon the hearing or reading does it earworm into brain cells to fester and yet, bear fruit? Do the roots entangle with the 'what was' to become a 'what might be?' Does it evolve, transform when whisked with a differing perspective? Or does it simply fade into the gray between thought and memory?
Does a poem live and thrive in the brain, transmuting memory? Does it gouge its point; a finely-honed dagger to dig in or cut out? Does it slide softly like a cool breeze across the face of reality? Does it affect neurons and become a part of the wholeness?
Where does a poem live? Is it instilled into the heart, that is more than mere muscle to pump life? Does it then touch every facet of the living diamond in the rough? Does it gain the power to metamorphosize mere carbon into something more? Is it then and there it belies reason and simply is? Or ...
Does the poem live in the soul? In that existential space unique to each being can the poem change every soul it enhances? Does it shift beyond language into canon, become a prism refracting color brightly enough for even the blind to see? Does it cause the soul to pause,
to draw a breath and sigh?
Just don't tell me the poem doesn't live, that it is, indeed, mere ink upon a page, mere words uttered into the void -for that would shatter me.
The pieces of who this poet is would then be encased to the cellular level in iron to sink to the depths beyond the deep.
Or perhaps, not.
For I shouldn't believe you. |
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A typical Saturday conversation prior to the lockdown followed by the reality
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Fivesixer  writes: I've done readings in front of audiences before, but what handicaps me is I can't memorize my poems for that purpose. Even though I read my work aloud to myself once I'm satisfied with it and need to hear it, I also have a hard time replicating its rhythm out loud as opposed to in my head. Making videos is easier for me and is a great tool for promotion...Elle - on hiatus  's "Poetry Readings" is a great forum for WDC poets to get their work out there and expand their readership.
Monty  says: This one got me thinking Fyn, for surely oft times it is blood not ink.
~Brian K Compton~  comments: It's important to share our journey as writers, not only to leave sign posts to our past, but reveal our human nature and common relevancy in an otherwise dehumanizing, indifferent world. As we have voices, people need our words to (in)form voice.
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