I'm a Poem, Get me Out of Here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

Hello again, Everyone,

I will be working on a new poem over the weekend and hope to publish it here soon. I am struggling a bit at the moment with a bad foot that hates any cold and damp weather at any time of year and can be relied upon to play me up accordingly. A continuing ear infection is quite stressful to, as I can only wear one hearing aid. As for the prostate cancer, that has a mind of its own. The poetry and your company help me get by ok, though, so no worries... even if the housework doesn't always get done as it should. 😉 

Now, a reader writes, “I get ideas for a poem, then I sort of lose the plot. Even if I finish a poem, I find myself stuck for a title. Any tips?" Oh, but how I empathise! I have moments when I honestly can't believe I have another poem in me. As for titles, I can spend almost as much time thinking about those as writing the poem. 😉

We all need a distraction from the coronavirus and if you enjoy poetry, it can be fun as well as enlightening and therapeutic to try your hand at writing as well as reading it. Why enlightening? It may surprise you just how much you have observed about about nature and human nature as the poem progresses, about yourself too.

Now, every poet has their own way of energising a flow with which mind-body-spirit instinctively feels inclined to follow, and there are far better poets than me. Me, I will often sit by my kitchen window, look down at the garden below or at the sky above, and look for clues as to what I should write about next; given that both are an everchanging landscape according to its various wildlife behaviour and seasonal plant life from dawn to dusk, the inner eye will hopefully be drawn to one aspect or another, and lo... a poem may yet start to write itself in my head. 

Creating and shaping a poem from beginning to end is no easy task. Yours truly enjoys wring poems in classic forms such as the villanelle or kenning, but the chances are a poem will find its own way of shaping up. 

I can spend as much time on a first draft as the poem I end up with to which, more often than not it will bear little or no resemblance. One can try to hard to breathe life into a poem that hasn’t the will to live. The keyword is distraction. Leave the poem for as long as it takes to distract your attention. Go for a walk or get on with some housework. whatever. You may have left the poem, but if you have the motivation and passion to finish it, there is no way the poem will leave you. Indeed, it is likely to spring out at you when you least expect it, and take you further into it; the further a poet ventures into a poem, the more likely it is to take on a life-force of its own.

A feeling for rhythm and/ or rhyme (internal and/ or external) is necessary to breathe life into a poem; any poem is a living organism in so far as it relates to the reader and the reader to the poem. Even blank (non-rhyming) verse requires a sense of rhythm.

The importance of titles cannot be overestimated; the title of a poem is a reader's first introduction to what follows, and any poet needs his or her reader onside from the start for it to work for them, however well-constructed the poem may be. For me, a poem with the title ‘Untitled’ will invariably leave me cold; it might awaken some interest, but I am unlikely to make whatever journey it  may be that poem and poet would hope to steer me. I use the word ‘steer’ rather than ‘share’ because the reader’s experience of the poem is unlikely to be quite the same as the poet’s; mind-body-spirit may well take off at tangents from time to time, all credit to the poet for envisaging this, and to the poem for encouraging it.

There is no ABC guide to writing a poem, but hopefully the above goes some way towards answering the question.

Take care, everyone, be safe, and keep as well as any of us can expect to feel with Covid-19 unlikely to be finished with us yet awhile. Even so, thank goodness for the vaccines.

Thanks for dropping by, always much appreciated,

Hugs,

Roger

Poetry, Rites of Way OR Engaging with Mind-body-Spirit

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

Now, I am often asked why I write poetry. While I think of myself as a poet who happens to be gay rather than a gay poet, the gay input to my poetry is especially important to me. Hopefully, gay readers will enjoy relating to it, if only in part, while the less gay-friendly heterosexual reader is invited to put aside any outdated, misleading, and often offensive stereotypes that continue to attach themselves to the whole gay ethic in the minds of the less enlightened.  Much the same can be said of my approach to fiction; I haven't written many novels and none have been bestsellers although they sold well and feedback was mixed but on the whole appreciative; as with my poetry, I have tried to reach a mixed readership, and enjoyed every minute of it.   Anyone interested can read my fiction in serial form on my Fiction in the Subject Field blog; synopses at:

Now, although I enjoy socialising, I am also a very private person. I have never kept a journal because I hate the idea of anyone accessing details of my private life and thoughts when I am no longer around to qualify what I wrote. At the same time, my poems are journal pages of a kind; few are strictly autobiographical, but each and every one turns on the kind of person I am, warts ‘n’ all.

Many of my poems have been inspired by conversations with all sorts of people - men and women, gay and straight alike - who have told me about themselves as this bar, that bus queue…wherever. The subsequent poem is as much their story as mine. At the same time, how I chose to write the poem illustrates my train of thought upon hearing and often relating to what they had to say and mulling it over for hours, weeks, months, and even years. My fiction takes shape in much the same way although I, personally, find poetry both more expansive and inclusive. Any readers interested, may like to visit my fiction blog sometime, details at:

https://rogertaberfiction.blogspot.com/2016/05/news-updates-fiction.html

Writing poetry, like any creative process, exercises the inner eye in seeing even what is sometimes considered (by whom?) best overlooked. We all need to see and feel in order to try and understand; every artist wants to share his or her insight, feelings, and subsequent understanding - flawed though it may well be - with others.

Past-present-future, the poetry of yesterday-today-tomorrow, the stuff of dreams and personal space, seeing as through ... whatever.

Oh, and, by the way, I was born on a sloping dead-end street.

POETRY, RITES OF WAY or ENGAGING WITH MIND-BODY-SPIRIT

When this life ceases to be,

my spirit left to feed on eternity,

what will they think of me

who drank my wine at table,

doubted I was even able

to write at all or, at least, as well

as one might who always

kept Mount Parnassus in sight,

despite the English climate?

Oh, I dare say they were right,

but I’ve so enjoyed being a poet,

lapping up all criticism, praise,

scepticism, quips about simplicity,

a serious lack of intellectuality,

how gay-interest poetry undermines

a proud genre’s finer integrity,

compromises the very aesthetic

of its history and spirituality

I've heard it’s a cardinal sin

to lower the tone, let anyone in

on a poem, its place in the arts

intended to impress, access

only partly allowed or its mystery

all but solved, and that way

(surely?) anarchy lies. Whatever,

a poet will always have the edge

on Mr, Mrs, and Ms Average

Although but mortal, mind and body

expect more of the human spirit

Copyright R. N. Taber 2005; 2012

[Note: An earlier version of this poem was mistakenly published under its draft title 'Requiem for a Poet' in A Feeling for the Quickness Of Time by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2005.]

Every Poem Tells A Story

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

I have always loved reading, writing and telling stories. I dare say you will have noticed how this carries over into many of my poems.

EVERY POEM TELLS A STORY

Every poem tells a story…
about love, hate, shame, glory,
whatever inspires, lights
the fires of creativity, blind coals
in secret cavities of the soul
that now and then burst
into flames, lighting up the mind,
exposing the heart’s needs,
its strengths and weaknesses
born of love, lust, hate, pain,
grieving for the world's repeating
its worst again and again,
leaving poor humanity to follow on
as best it can, put right
its wrongs, conveniently rewrite
the saddest songs of war,
disasters, wounds that will never
truly heal - with lines even
a paralysed heart can feel, though
it take a while to penetrate
its body armour, participate in the
latest United Nations resolution,
promises of aid on the way, more than
mere dreams fading as each day
turns into night, night into day, no one
(still) anything wiser to say
than - Let’s pray. And where is God
looking out for whom, exactly, a child
dying of AIDS or starvation…?

Every poem tells a story with as many endings

as humanity's interpretation of its meanings

Copyright R. N. Taber 2005; rev. 2021

[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears in A Feeling For The Quickness Of Time by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2005; rev. 2021.]