Several weeks ago I came up with a new idea for this blog I call Book Club. Book Club is where I ask my readers and friends their opinions when it comes to books, writing, authors, and writing. Because April is National Poetry Month I asked a few of my friends to answer a few questions regarding poetry. Here are the initial questions I asked:
- What does poetry mean to you?
- Who are your favorite poets and why? Name some of you favorite poems and why? (Links or copies of these poems would be greatly appreciated)
- Have you ever written poetry? Why or why not? (You can share your original poetry if you want to)
- Anything else you would like to add?
The first to answer are my friends Nora and Tari, and here are their very interesting answers in their very own words (nothing edited by me).
NORA
- What does poetry mean to you?
Poetry is very meaningful to me. It is where all the wordsmiths come together to shine. It is like the “Auto Show of Literature.” I call it the Auto Show because basically, you see cars every day, ordinary cars, rusty cars, different brands, these cars are not extraordinary, just useful and functional. Then you get invited to the “Auto Show”… and the cars there are shiny, luxurious, top- of- the-line in design and function, futuristic, out-of-worldly, gorgeous colors, every detail is amazing and breathtaking! That is how I view poetry … amazing and breathtaking.
- Who are your favorite poets and why? Name some of your favorite poems and why? (Links or copies of these poems would be greatly appreciated)
What I like about most poetry and poets is that there is a very human and urgent need to use words to describe universal feelings and expressions. Poets are usually ordinary folks who take an extraordinary “look” at what everyone knows and wants. That’s why the meaning of most poems doesn’t feel dated.
Some of my favorite poets are:
Charles Bukowski: If you ever wanted to feel “cool” and bask in the sun of “loser-dom” without actually living the pain, Bukowski is your man. He puts you right there and you see the details of the life of the loner, the drunk, the misfit, the bored, the angry, the sad, and you love his poems for the accuracy and you kinda hate and despise him too. He’s disgusting to you, but you are grateful to him because you get to live through him without gettingyour hands dirty. He creates a small beauty in all of his muck.
Here is Bukowski’s poem about his daughter. It’s called, “Marina.”
Marina
************
majestic, magic
infinite
my little girl is
sun
on the carpet –
out the door
picking a flower, ha!,
an old man,
battle-wrecked,
emerges from his
chair
and she looks at me
but only sees
love,
ha!, and I become
quick with the world
and love right back,
just like I was meant
to do.
Bobby Sands: (Irish Republican soldier who died in 1981 from hunger in jail after 66 days of starving. He was protesting against the oppressive British forces who refused to recognize him as a political prisoner, instead of a common criminal).
Bobby Sands is a total romantic character for me. I used to read his writing when I was a younger girl. I didn’t really know the particulars or could personally relate to the circumstances of his plight as an IRA soldier, but I could definitely relate to his feelings of being oppressed and confined and written off. Plus, his need to express himself forced him, in his prison cell, to write on little bits of toilet paper with a pen that he had to hide in one of his personal body cavities. That is a strong statement on the human need to be heard and what a person would do in order to be heard!
Here is one of my favorite poems of his called “Modern Times”:
It is said we live in modern times,
In the civilized year of ‘seventy-nine,
But when I look around, all I see,
Is modern torture, pain, and hypocrisy.
In modern times little children die,
They starve to death, but who dares ask why?
And little girls without attire,
Run screaming, napalmed, through the night alive.
And while fat dictators sit upon their thrones,
Young children bury their parents’ bones,
And secret police in the dead of night,
Electrocute the naked woman out of sight.
In the gutter lies the black man, dead,
And where the oil flows blackest, the street runs red,
And there was He who was born and came to be,
But lived and died without liberty.
As the bureaucrats, speculators and presidents alike,
Pin on their dirty, stinking, happy smiles tonight,
The lonely prisoner will cry out from within his tomb,
And tomorrow’s wretch will leave its mother’s womb!
- Have you ever written poetry? Why or why not? (You can share your original poetry if you want to)
Only recently have I tried to write poetry, so it is a brand new skill for me. I think it never occurred to me to write it before was because of the way it was taught to me as a young student. I got the impression that poetry could only be written by people who were real writers or English majors, people who were scholarly and knew all the meters and rules of poetry. And all the poems we read were about love and they rhymed and used Old English or vocabulary that I couldn’t relate to or wrap my mind around. Poetry felt like calligraphy to me, beautiful to look at, but not necessarily useful for us common folks. Poetry was for those who wanted to impress, not express.
The lack of connection to Poetry pushed me towards the “song.” Song lyrics became more interesting and relevant to me and they were easier to understand. But lately, since songs to me these days involve instrumentation, musical genres and styles, more about persona and marketing, all this complicates the direct communication of words to ears to meaning. So with the modern day love of rap music and rappers are becoming modern day wordsmiths, the poem is making a comeback. Today’s poems have to be impactful, though, pointed, and most of all, socially conscious and reflect part of their listeners’ lives. Today’s poetry readers have to feel like the poet existed in their minds and said it in the way that they would have said it.
TARI
1) Poetry doesn’t seem to have rules. A poet can evoke any emotion by the fewest words, or the most. Poems are valuable to us in that we don’t necessarily need to understand them to ‘get’ them. They are visceral. Poetry is deeply personal, and can be a full-on attack, or a salve, or anything in-between. Poetry speaks to our singular life experiences, and opens our eyes to other’s. It can be brutally soul-baring, and it can be beautiful, all in the same poem.
2) Charles Bukowski and Emily Dickinson. One is raw like an open wound, the other is genteel, cultured. Both are brilliant, both are honest.
3) I don’t have a favorite from Bukowski. I’m electrified, repulsed, enlightened in some way by most of his work. Emily D never really liked titles, so people gave her poems numbers and used the first line as the title. Poem 314: Hope is the Thing With Feathers is by far my favorite. It’s inspirational and full of that very thing. Hope.
4) I have. Let’s just say I won’t make the mistake of thinking I could maybe ever do that again. So bad.
5) I hold poets, I mean really good poets, in the highest esteem. I believe their ability to cast a naked, unjaded eye and lay bare artifice is unparalleled. I wish I had the ability to turn a phrase like they do, to bend words to their will. As a fiction writer, I use words… poets conduct them.Their social commentary can be, and often is, invaluable and necessary, and it is always deeply rooted in humanity and human emotion, from whatever side they approach. I envy them, even as I celebrate them. I wish I could be them.
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