Poetry

I read the online version of Writer's Almanac every day. It's full of poetry. It makes me want to be a poet. Poetry isn't what it used to be. I thought to be a good poem the words had to rhyme. Apparently that's "old school" and thankfully so. Rhyming is hard. But eliminating rhyming doesn't make poetry easy. A poem has to say something. It has to say something important. And it has to say something in a beautiful or impactful way. 

The following words were written in the poem, Sea Fever in 1902. "I must go down to the sea again to the lonely sea and the sky. And all I ask is tall ship and a star to steer her by." Wow. How cool!

I am not sure how to differentiate a poem from the words of a song. "You've lost that loving feeling -- oh oh that loving feeling. You've lost that loving feeling and now its gone gone gone." The Righteous Brothers sang those words in 1965.

A few years ago I tried to write some poetry. The only poems that I finished were about aging. "Prostate Blues" and "I Found Myself in my Garage" were comical but they say a lot about getting old.  They are silly but real and heartfelt. Since writing those two poems/songs I have pretty much run dry. Which says to me that I am not cut out to be a poet or songwriter. Or maybe it says that I said whatever needed to be said and nothing else seems important enough for me to write about. Or it might say that I prefer writing prose over poetry. Whatever the motivation, here I sit at my laptop trying to write something that seems important to me. I like the idea that I might write a poem or a song, But nothing is coming today. 

I linger over the end of the last paragraph and wonder what I should write next. The white space is intimidating. When I finish one of my typical blog posts it is usually twice as long as the above. Is it possible that I have nothing more to say on this topic? Maybe this is enough. 

But maybe I need to give it a little more time. I should save this draft and come back to it later. Maybe there is more to say about why I prefer to write prose over poetry.  Maybe not. Let's see. 

Okay, let's finish this with a little about my location. My laptop sits on a desk in front of a sliding glass door in my apartment. I spend a lot of time looking out the window. Across the street is a fairly big apartment building so there is always movement over there. People come and go. Delivery people tap on phones to get them into the lobby so they can leave packages. Its a fairly busy street between me and the apartment building and I see a lot of cars and trucks go by. This street, 70th, more or less feeds into the street that goes around Green Lake. So it is busy most of the time. A young woman with her two daughters just stopped to pick up grandma. Looks like they might be going to the airport. 

That doesn't have much to do with poetry but I am sure a good poet could take the above paragraph and turn it into something. 

Otis Redding wrote something like --- sittin on the dock of the bay watching the tide roll away. I guess I could write something like -- sittin in front of a sliding glass door, watching the people roll away. Or maybe not. :-) 

Cheers.