from my old old blog

april 19 2005

12:23 am - Observations from a Reader of Poetry
Well, I just had a good entry about poetry. Why I love it, what it really is. It was pretty poetic itself.
"I love good poetry. It's sinuous lines....the trick is to write not just the words of your heart, but the song: Tonight I sat curled up in the blue chair by the pink phone/hoping you would call/ but you didn't./ You fill the air with popsicle colored dreams./ But when the world freezes/they shatter/as do/ I [FYI this is not necessarily something I'm experiencing :)]...Beauty of poetry...You can do anything you want with words...dreams aren't really colored and they can't really freeze....to describe your feelings not just with adjectives, but with paintings....I like poetry that moves me, that changes me, or at least my day, because I read it. May I share some with you?"
It was more than that, it was long, and I lost it. So, I guess it was really never meant to be read. Which was something I talked about... what makes a poem great? Is it great because we like it or is there a difference between it being enjoyed and it being good? Can a poem be good if, after it is written and slipped through the pages of life, it is never read again? Perhaps, I wondered, the best poems are the ones we write everyday, the ones that slip through our hearts. I love good poems. May I share one with you?

Late Hours
by Lisel Mueller
On summer nights the world
moves within earshot on the interstate with its swish and
growl, an occasional siren that
sends chills through us.
Sometimes, on clear, still
nights, voices float into our
bedroom, lunar and
fragmented, as if the sky had let
them go long before our birth.

In winter we close the windows
and read Chekhov, nearly
 weeping for his world.

What luxury, to be so happy
that we can grieve over
imaginary lives.