Hmmm…actually I wrote a few snippets of faux poetry for an old short story we did called Beauty More Stealthy, which was also the name of a poem our detective’s rather callow, young friend had written. I also wrote some purposely dreadful versus for Five For Silver, in which one of the characters was a perfectly dreadful poet.

Sometimes, although far from having a poet’s gift with rhyme and meter, I find that simply trying to write a poem can help shape an image, a thought, and, in the rush to put the words down, carry me beyond the poem itself into a story that I hadn’t expected to find.

And I’ve discovered that reading a poet’s work–especially the poems of Mary Oliver, a favorite of mine, too–can serve as a worthwhile way to “break the ice” each morning before sitting down to write.

If you enjoy reading poetry online, you might take a look at this project… http://www.americanlifeinpoetry.org/ Perhaps you’ll find a handful of new poets to add to your shelf.

Wish I could remember where it’s from, who wrote it.

And then there’s John Donne whose poetry does not scan but whose sermons read beautifully as blank verse: No man is an island. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less as well as if a manor of thine own or thy friends were. Therefore send not to know for whom the bell tolls….

Many’s the time I’ve recited poetry to myself on long walks or lonely train rides or riding an oxcart down an Indian path between villages. From memory and probably with errors, but it was as if the authors were keeping me company in my solitary journeys.

Whose woods these are I think I know,
His house is in the village though
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

See now? You’ve got me started visiting my old friends once more. Thank you and good night.

Glad to “see” you again! Thanks for visiting my butterflies; I was sure those photos had gone forever.

Poetry… gosh. I loved poetry when I was reading a lot of it in college. Wrote some and destroyed it. Thanks for the sweet old memory. (John Denver stinks, though.)

–karen