Poetry.

“Prose: words in their best order; poetry: the best words in the best order.”

―Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“As it happens, I am still committed to the idea that the ability to think for one's self depends upon one's mastery of the language.”

―Joan Didion

Poetry is a form of “accelerated thinking”. Poems combine depth of feeling, clarity of thought and the power of imagery in a mystical combination that rises to another level of communication. They sit at the edge where reality and imagination interact.

Books of poetry are the books that are like the “axe for the frozen sea within us” which Franz Kafka believed we needed. And any of one of the poetry anthologies by Edward Hirsch (above) will open a world that will make you see your world differently.

A poem beats out time.

Poetry is a soul making activity.

It sacramentalizes experience. And it gives us courage to speak up so that:

“Where the voice that is in us makes a true response, where the voice that is great within us rises up”

And poems reminds us of the passing of time…

Time is an echo of an axe within a wood

The sunlight in the garden hardens and grows cold, we cannot cage the minute within its net of Gold

One of my favorite poems about the passing of time is called “Otherwise” by Jane Kenyon and reminds us to appreciate every day because one day it will be otherwise

Otherwise

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.

All morning I did
the work I love.
At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.

Whenever you believe you have someone figured out or wonder why you cannot figure yourself or why things are always changing these lines from Ars Poetica? by Czelaw Milosz might be of help:

“The purpose of poetry is to remind us how difficult it is to remain just one person,  for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,  and invisible guests come in and out at will.”

Or Rabindranath Tagore’s Last Poems (#13)

Poems help us “see” differently.

Here are some lines by James Wright’s book “ The Branch will not Break” which all describe dusk in a midwest prairie farm. Each line is filled with a new way of seeing and whenever I am driving in the evenings outside of Chicago I sense things differently because of these lines. The sensing and seeing also helps me in my writing, my photography and in paying attention…

Silos creep away toward the West

The cow bells follow one another into the distances of the afternoon

The sun floats down, a small golden lemon dissolves in the water

The moon suddenly stands up in the darkness

The moon drops one or two feathers into the field. The dark wheat listens.

Of all the books of Poetry I have my favorite remains the first book I bought forty five years ago which you can see through its wear and tear and is the one I would recommend to anyone wanting to discover the beauty of Poetry. Start with Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Tennyson and Dylan Thomas . It was published first in 1952. Its author died in 1964. You can still get it on online and and in most book stores…