…Poetry

It’s National Poetry Month, but I didn’t realize that when I decided on this subject for my P post.

Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t like poetry. They think it’s fussy. They can’t understand it. They were forced to read boring, horrible poetry in high school, and vowed never to read poetry again. Ever. Ever. Ever.

Or they were forced to write poetry, which was (is?) even worse. I mean, figuring out iambic pentameter is hard enough, but what about all the other types of rhythm and meter?

A Poetry Foundation webpage lists them, which include anapest (“a metrical foot consisting of two unaccented syllables followed by an accented syllable.”), dimeter (“A line of verse composed of two feet.”), and spondee (“A metrical foot consisting of two accented syllables.“).

And of course there are forms of poetry, including alexandrine (“In English, a 12-syllable iambic line adapted from French heroic verse.”), epic (“a long narrative poem“, most likely what caused the hatred of poetry), and sestina (“A complex French verse form, usually unrhymed, consisting of six stanzas of six lines each and a three-line envoy.”) (As an aside, I actually have a friend, Emery L. Campbell, who likes to write sestinas. For fun.)

Got all that? Yeah, I don’t either.

So yeah, people get overwhelmed and distrustful of poetry, which is a shame, because there are some absolutely beautiful poems out there. And, as David Whyte says:

Poetry allows us to acknowledge the fullness of our being in ways that are often denied in daily life.

Which is true. So here are a few poems, and I hope you enjoy them:

Spare Parts
by February Grace

I’ve become a shed of
rusted spare parts
comprised of all
that others
have cast off

I wish to be
a weathered shelf or bureau
dings and scratches, yes
distressed
still worth reclaiming

I wait for someone to look twice,
beyond the surface
to decide
beneath the damage and the scars
my bones are beautiful

I could be restored,
renewed,
life breathed back into
with a bit of love
and elbow grease.

This poem shared by permission of the author.

I Chop Some Parsley While Listening To Art Blakey’s Version Of “Three Blind Mice”
by Billy Collins

And I start wondering how they came to be blind.
If it was congenital, they could be brothers and sister,
and I think of the poor mother
brooding over her sightless young triplets.

Or was it a common accident, all three caught
in a searing explosion, a firework perhaps?
If not,
if each came to his or her blindness separately,

how did they ever manage to find one another?
Would it not be difficult for a blind mouse
to locate even one fellow mouse with vision
let alone two other blind ones?

And how, in their tiny darkness,
could they possibly have run after a farmer’s wife
or anyone else’s wife for that matter?
Not to mention why.

Just so she could cut off their tails
with a carving knife, is the cynic’s answer,
but the thought of them without eyes
and now without tails to trail through the moist grass

or slip around the corner of a baseboard
has the cynic who always lounges within me
up off his couch and at the window
trying to hide the rising softness that he feels.

By now I am on to dicing an onion
which might account for the wet stinging
in my own eyes, though Freddie Hubbard’s
mournful trumpet on “Blue Moon,”

which happens to be the next cut,
cannot be said to be making matters any better.

By the way, Billy Collins was previously the poet laureate of the United States. I’ve heard him speak twice. He’s wonderful! Check out his books on Amazon. (This poem taken from PoemHunter.com.)

And of course, I couldn’t do a post on poetry without sharing one of my own. (You can read a few more on my website if you wish…)

Death Visits the Opera
by D. Savannah George

“It was spectacular!” Death
said in his gravelly voice
after spending a night at
the opera.
                He had hung
his black robe in his closet,
rented a tuxedo from
the nearest formal shop, and
bought doubtful-smelling scent from a
frightened salesgirl.
                            That night, he
careened in on his steed,
had it valet parked, muttered
something about bad help, and
took his seat as the curtain
lifted.
            He hardly noticed the
stares, nor the fact that quite a
radius of seats around
him was empty, although he
would have wished to talk about
the show with someone.
                                    He liked
the opera anyway;
his eyes peered through great mists of
people at the stage, where fat
women sang notes that startled
angels.
            The huge chorus in
the background stood and sat, and
stood and sat, which made Death quite
dizzy; he had to hold tight
to the armrest.
                      As he left,
the crowd melted before him;
he didn’t hear the gasps from
a few pale souls; nor did
he even have to wait for
his horse.
                    “All in all it was
quite a nice evening” he said,
sighing nervously, as he
tried to catch up on backlog
awaiting him at work.
                                But
“I suppose it was worth it”
his spectral voice intoned.
                                        And
“I don’t think anybody
recognized me.”