| Current mood: |  creative |
It's Poetry in Motion!
Weekend Assignment #212: It's National Poetry Month in the United States, but poetry itself is a worldwide phenomenon, existing in many styles. Let's celebrate the form. How? By writing a poem, of course! It can be silly or serious, haiku, limerick, rhymed verse, blank verse, free verse, two lines long or fifty, or anything in between. All I ask is that it be a new, original poem, not something you wrote in high school and trot out occasionally.
Extra Credit: Do you have a favorite poet?
First of all, a huge thanks to Karen for prompting me to do a bit of creative writing today, an interest and (I hope) talent I all too often neglect, and work, school, and theater are all well and good, but are no excuses not to be writing. I had no idea what was going to come out when I sat down to write a new poem today. There were no ideas in my head clamoring to get out. So, after staring at a blank page for several minutes, here's what ended up happening:
I'm getting paid to throw mirrors away
I'm doing this work very well.
I quietly walk through this city all day
With nothing to pitch, buy, or sell.
So many people rush by on the street,
Their eyes all on goals I can't see.
As they focus their minds on invisible things,
I'm thankful they don't notice me.
Soon their reflections will all disappear
And they won't know who they have to blame.
All I need for reward is the dough I take home.
Why would I dare also want fame?
My boss says it's all for the good of the whole
We're making a friendlier town.
Neighbors will look at each other again -
or might they all mostly look down?
I only make one mistake on this job
But I make it over and over again:
When I'm handling mirrors that must be destroyed,
I'm tempted to see who I am.
Now, as for my favorite poet? Well, as someone who majored in English and meant it, there may just be too many possible answers to this question. John Keats was a wonderful poet, almost impossibly wonderful, how could such things as his poems come out of a regular old human being? Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde, Emily Dickinson, Samuel Coleridge, Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, Dylan Thomas . . . well, suffice it to say, I like a lot of poets.
The true honest answer, to the question, though (and I hope it's not cheating that I have two favorite poets - well, if you can count a rock band as one poet) is: my very favorite poets are Shakespeare and The Beatles. You could probably ask me a million "Do you have a favorite _____?" questions and my answer would be Shakespeare and The Beatles.
I never fail to feel a sensation down my spine when I read or hear these words, no matter how often it's been:
What a piece of work is a man!
How noble in reason!
How infinite in faculty!
in form, in moving, how express and admirable!
in action how like an angel!
in apprehension how like a god!
the beauty of the world!
the paragon of animals!
And as for The Beatles, the lyrics of songs like Strawberry Fields Forever, The Fool on the Hill, It's All Too Much, and many, many others, are always popping into my head, refining my perspectives and echoing the ideas and impressions I gain with the chords they strike.
Since I slipped popular music into this assignment, somehow I feel obliged to also give a nod to Paul Simon, whom I have an immense appreciation for as a songwriter and highly poetical lyricist. In honor of National Poetry Week, here's a link to Paul and Art singing Richard Cory, a direct marriage of a classic American poem and contemporary music.
On a final note, I started to sing the poem I wrote today to myself, to see what kind of tune would come out, and I found it sounded a lot like Billy Joel's "Innocent Man." Odd, because I probably haven't heard that song in four years or more, and I'm not particularly big on Billy Joel in general.
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