Written Whispers

Picked up a book the other day, PoemCrazy (it’s one word on the cover) by Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge and let me just tell you right now- it’s absolutely awesome. I don’t tend to consider myself much of a poet for many reasons, the main one being something you probably wouldn’t think.

Some baser reasons being that I’ve had it hard coded into my mind by teachers of old that poems are short pieces that often rhyme… This is not true. Not in the least! Nevertheless, the urge to shorten things and force a certain flow still exists within me. Don’t get me wrong, I like to rhyme but I know that’s not what the poetry is about and my need to find the ‘thing that sounds right’ often leads me away from the message my words were aiming at in the first place.

Another reason is that I never really, really like my poetry unless it’s written in the moment of some deep emotion. It always seems so ‘on the surface’ if I write it any other time, like it’s not meant to be. The other side of this being that when written in the moment my words often carry a darker flavor on my tongue- these are usually the ones I like even more but life experiences have built a slight flinch response in me wherever that taste is present. No matter how much I may enjoy it.

These two reasons together almost equal the third. The one main reason I don’t quite call myself a poet- even though the words in me prose differently.

I haven’t yet been willing to break enough rules.

That’s changing though thanks to the influence of some wonderful writing buddies and a few good books. Beyond that though- words will come when they want to. You can try to put them in a fish tank or behind a brilliant wall but like water (Taoism!) poetry can flow over all things. Over glass, under sand, carefully eroding stone away with time. All I need to do is keep the flow going and eventually even I won’t be able to stop the purple prose from doing what it wants. :)

Peace, love, and purple words!

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 19th, 2009 at 5:06 am and is filed under Poetry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.