April: not a bad month, literarily. All the writing challenges you could ever want, plus a celebration of that most elusive of literary forms.
Ah, poetry. Done right, it can give you a feeling, a memory, put a ray of sunlight into words.
Done wrong, well – that’s what I do.
Poetry is interesting. It either resonates, or you may find yourself wondering why you’re bothering. It can rhyme, or not. And if it does, there are dozens of accepted forms. You can really do whatever you want, as long as it forms some connection.
I’m not a big poetry person – I think I lack the necessary imagery-interpreters in my brain, but even I occasionally find some that touch something.
Here’s one of my favorites: This is Just to Say, by William Carlos Williams:
I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so coldThus goes my tastes. (My husband and I actually put this on the back of our wedding programs.) I also admit to liking e.e.cummings because I love to look at his poems, from the odd punctuation to the strange formatting. You’d think, as an editor, that he’d drive me crazy, but there’s something very appealing about the whole thing.
And then, on the other end of the spectrum, I rather enjoy Robert Frost. Nothing Gold Can Stay is one of my favorites – perhaps because the first play I ever did in high school was the Outsiders.
I claim to be neither e.e.cummings or Robert Frost, so the best you get from me are strange limericks.
Though I hate to be engrossed
There’s something about stories of ghosts
The thrills and the sounds
Jumping abounds
At the behest of a deep-voiced host
What are your favorite poems, Squiders? Any good at any of your own?
