The privilege of the poet
© 2021 Terrie Ferman
The privilege of the poet is thus -
when other talents turn to rust
they still can make a simile
metaphor or imagery.
The athlete’s skills will wane and die.
The poet goes on with sharpened eye
to form a sculpture out of words
that through the ages may be heard.
And, if not heard, just put away
denied the published light of day
in their hearts poets quietly know
that what they did had soothed their soul.
Behind the words
In a way, this is a ‘consolation’ poem for poets to soothe the reality that most poetry won’t be widely read.
Whatever poetry is
© 2020 Terrie Ferman
Whatever poetry is, it’s
not prose occasionally
punctuated to
suggest something that
isn’t there.
Such randomness does
not substitute for
poetry.
Behind the words
There are so many forms of poetry, each with their own legitimacy. However, at times, a ‘poem’ will seem to be just a random word salad that only the poet could understand or relate to.
Featured poet: Ann Liebert
Ann Liebert is a Brisbane-based poet.
Mister Yeats
© 2020 Ann Liebert
I know you wish to be alone,
Alone at Innisfree.
I'd never tap your cabin door
Or chide your honeybee.
I wouldn't steal a winding bean
That ripens in their row...
But for my sake, across the lake
A-sailing I shall go.
And if, by chance, I see you there
Just sitting by the shore
Well, that will be enough for me.
I won't need any more.
OTHER
Essay: Poetry: A Few Musings
Terrie Ferman © 2024
Few lovers of poetry would disagree with Dylan Thomas’ sentiment that the world is never the same after the addition of a good new poem but many would debate what constitutes a good poem. From rap to the sonnet, from the ballad to the triolet, from limerick to haiku, from villanelles to free verse and the prose poem, poetry is a mansion of many rooms, each with its own architecture, some with tightly defined features, others more loosely designed. While different forms of poetry have their requirements where it can be challenging to mould meaning and shape together, possibly it can sometimes be even more daunting for the poet to write successfully without the scaffolding of prescribed form.
Poetry awakens our senses whether it is experienced through the eye, the ear or both. It’s a different experience listening to a poem, whether through a recording or in a public space and reading it privately straight from the page. Early forms of poetry were performed verbally by minstrels. With increased literacy and the invention of the printing press, poetry founds its way onto paper and, latterly, screens. Gradually, poets had started to write to be read rather than to be heard. Perhaps there is now a swing of the pendulum back to verbal performance with the advent of slam poets, pub poets and festival performers. A good poem in the hands (voice) of an accomplished performer assumes a new life, an added enrichment. It’s hard to think of a form of poetry that wouldn’t acquire a new shine through being expertly performed, the exception obviously being pictorial poems. While celebrating performance poetry, I would argue that the litmus test of a poem is whether it can stand alone on a page and reach a reader.
Writing poetry is an unpredictable process. On rare occasions, when the muse is kind, a poem will write itself but I doubt that this is common for many poets. (It certainly isn’t for me.) Nor is the success rate high; the quality can be variable. I have a book of Emily Dickinson’s complete poems – 1775 in all. Not every one is wonderful. In fact, my guess is that a poet has to write a lot of poems (maybe more than 100) to achieve perhaps three or four good ones. I base this calculation on my own experience plus the opinion of British poet/comedian Tim Key who said something similar. If novelists had the same success rate, we’d have very few new books being published.
So why bother? For the same reason that musicians compose, that artists paint, that embroiderers embroider, that gardeners tend their plots: to meet some creative urge, whether small or compelling, persistent or occasional. Once that creative urge has been met to whatever degree, perhaps it’s enough for poets to know they’ve en-joy-ed the world (for instance at weddings) or consoled the world (at funerals), even if only among a small circle of private acquaintance. Few are likely to become famous.
A singular comfort available to poets and other writers and often denied to other creative people is that they can continue writing into old age. Unlike athletes whose skills are physical, the imaginative talents of poets will allow them to continue to craft similes or metaphors, experiment with pantoums or ottava rimas or even create hybrid forms.
As a very modestly successful writer of fiction, non-fiction and poetry, it’s poetry that most challenges and rewards me when it works. The process remains mysterious and unreliable but magical when it does work. Not that we should ever expect it to work but we can be grateful when it does. Paul McCartney says his way of writing music is to ‘noodle around’ on the piano and hope he gets lucky; writing poetry is not dissimilar to that.