Do what?
Poetry. Who needs it?
It does not sale in the market if you’re looking to make money.
For people who read, poetry seems to cause emotions almost as extreme as politics. They either like or they don’t. My husband has hated poetry most of his life, but claims I am bringing him around to it
But, writing poetry has changed so much from what we associate with 19th century poems about love and roses. I quote Carl Sandburg so much because he is the poet who taught me to love poetry.
I read an article in the June issue of “Authors Publish,” a free online monthly magazine for writers, about why every writer should try poetry. It bunks the myth that every poet is a writer, but not every writer is a poet. I firmly believe in trying to write everything, and the trick for a writer with a real world job, like teaching and raising two young children, is time.
I think the reason I go back to Carl Sandburg as a writer is because he did write everything, and he got down in the dirt with his poetry. He wrestled with the words.
To be honest, poetry has got to be ugly beautiful:
from Mag by Carl Sandburg
“I wish I never saw you Mag
I wish you never quit your job and came along with me…”
Push aside the fact the speaker is a jerk, and you realize in one poem Sandburg rips apart everything poetry was. He made me want to ugly cry. He has many poems that make me want to become a stronger poet, but he masters ugly beautiful poetry.
I have a memoir I will continue to work on for sometime, and when school ended, I had planned to jump on it. Through the trauma with which I have been diagnosed, rhythmic lines started playing through my head. I am scribbling or typing poetry on my tablet.
I start off with some line: “I have no voice for the sinners./ No songs for them to sing” or “I think I play a solid hand./ I think I have the Aces.” In a poem called “Men and Monsters,” I start with “Have you seen the place/ where men and monsters meet?”
They all form a sort of memoir poetry without going into complete prose poetry. It is complicated, but it uses modern forms of poetry while getting down in the dirt with each word.
Excerpt from Men and Monsters
You think I aim on
purpose for his eyes,
But, I see in you
no sun or Earth,
for in my soul,
you believe it is where
men and monsters meet.
I realized Monday I have enough poems to return to the idea of a chapbook with a very specific themes, and a poetic camera lens on certain moments. I chose two roads that played a role in my life, two people who left their marks, and scars still healing from two careers. While there are other people who play roles in my poems, especially my father; they are not the core.
This time I want the theme with poems around a very specific focus on just the idea of memories.
from Haunted Memories
Memories:
The boy’s body
being covered
with a white sheet.
The rain came
pouring like
Vietnam’s
water season.
Intersection
lights turned off.
While I have put together poetry collections in the past with each feeding the later versions, they were not focused, as concise, or as concerned with word choice and structure. Haunted Memories will open the chapbook I am calling “Recollections of Luska Road and Poems about Haunted Memories.”
Dig in the Earth. Sort through the soil. Find your ugly beautiful words.
Corrie's Season 