This! Omg this is all of the things why I write poetry and named my account Poetry for Sanity. The more un sane the world is the more I need to visit that place beyond to not get lost to this reality.
I loved this quote “do something with words that we can’t actually do”
There is a deep truth in this, poetry is a way to say things beyond the restriction of obtuse words while using those words to do it.
Thanks so much for your comments—and what irony re: the name of your account. I love that quote as well, the idea that we're always trying to say something that's impossible to say.
Love this post for a myriad of reasons. It truly resonates with me. I'm 50 years old presently, and have been reading poetry for a half hour as part of a morning ritual ever since I was an undergrad. The why is unimportant, as this SUBSTACK post is all about your experience, and I'm so grateful you shared this. Truly.
From Calvino to Rilke, I just love the contents of this post. Anything well written is worth a read, so I'll be on the lookout for your vacuum cleaning manual. 😂
My morning's reading today was a bit of Mother Love by Rita Dove (something about complicated daughter/mother relationships has me circling back to The Homeric Hymn to Demeter), and a few poems by Theodore Roethke.
Thanks so much, Stephanie! That vacuum cleaning manual is going to be my best work, I swear. What a wonderful morning ritual you have. A half hour of poetry to start the day is as close to the divine as we can get.
Aha. I myself could write a mean vacuum cleaner repair manual as I had to fix three of them when I went home to Iowa and then after filling the house with the smell of burnt rubber I gave up and bought a new shop vac.
Well sweet damn, I'll be saving and sharing this post in an intro to poetry workshop I'm planning for fellow college kids with the club I'm part of.
I might just read this post out loud to everyone haha. It's really well penned. I liken poetry to the wet space between sand and sea, where the beach is at any moment skybed and the next seabed.
Thanks so much! If you read this to your workshop, let me know how they respond. Can I recommend showing them Kim Addonizio's poem, "Introduction to Poetry"? I bet they'd get a kick out of it (and it's very instructive in its way). Thanks again!
Oooh, susurration! I used that word last year to describe the wind passing through bushes, susurrating hedges I called them, in a poem about a nighttime walk I went on with my mother.
There’s a passage in Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet that provides everything you need to know for how to write a poem:
“As if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose. … Describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty — describe all these with heartfelt, silent, humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the Things around you, the images from your dreams, and the objects that you remember.””
You put so much so well here. Finding poetry in the mundane, open-ended curiosity over certainty, writing as a kind of daily practice of noticing, how every kind of writing, if it's intended as art, is poetry at its core.
Thank you for these words. Felt like i was sipping coffee and wandering around time freely. I love words; their poetry within the poetry of time they create. I think the susurration words create and that i feel through them, even hear as if audible, is suitable definition for this ol’ girl’s joy and angst of reading, writing words, poems, life itself. Thank you for your way with words.
Love this one!
Thanks so much, Barbara!
This! Omg this is all of the things why I write poetry and named my account Poetry for Sanity. The more un sane the world is the more I need to visit that place beyond to not get lost to this reality.
I loved this quote “do something with words that we can’t actually do”
There is a deep truth in this, poetry is a way to say things beyond the restriction of obtuse words while using those words to do it.
Thanks so much for your comments—and what irony re: the name of your account. I love that quote as well, the idea that we're always trying to say something that's impossible to say.
happy to have stumbled upon this
Love this post for a myriad of reasons. It truly resonates with me. I'm 50 years old presently, and have been reading poetry for a half hour as part of a morning ritual ever since I was an undergrad. The why is unimportant, as this SUBSTACK post is all about your experience, and I'm so grateful you shared this. Truly.
From Calvino to Rilke, I just love the contents of this post. Anything well written is worth a read, so I'll be on the lookout for your vacuum cleaning manual. 😂
My morning's reading today was a bit of Mother Love by Rita Dove (something about complicated daughter/mother relationships has me circling back to The Homeric Hymn to Demeter), and a few poems by Theodore Roethke.
Enjoy your upcoming weekend! ~ S
Thanks so much, Stephanie! That vacuum cleaning manual is going to be my best work, I swear. What a wonderful morning ritual you have. A half hour of poetry to start the day is as close to the divine as we can get.
Aha. I myself could write a mean vacuum cleaner repair manual as I had to fix three of them when I went home to Iowa and then after filling the house with the smell of burnt rubber I gave up and bought a new shop vac.
Oh, that horrible scent of a vacuum cleaner's burnt rubber. I unfortunately know it well ...
Poetry very much is its own art form, and this is a great exploration as to why. Wonderful stuff!
Well sweet damn, I'll be saving and sharing this post in an intro to poetry workshop I'm planning for fellow college kids with the club I'm part of.
I might just read this post out loud to everyone haha. It's really well penned. I liken poetry to the wet space between sand and sea, where the beach is at any moment skybed and the next seabed.
Thanks so much! If you read this to your workshop, let me know how they respond. Can I recommend showing them Kim Addonizio's poem, "Introduction to Poetry"? I bet they'd get a kick out of it (and it's very instructive in its way). Thanks again!
I'm actually having trouble finding Addonizio's poem online. Do you know where I might find it?
Oh, sorry, I don't know if it's available online. It's in her collection "Mortal Trash."
Might you be willing to share a photo of it with me?
Oooh, susurration! I used that word last year to describe the wind passing through bushes, susurrating hedges I called them, in a poem about a nighttime walk I went on with my mother.
“How to write a poem?
There’s a passage in Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet that provides everything you need to know for how to write a poem:
“As if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose. … Describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty — describe all these with heartfelt, silent, humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the Things around you, the images from your dreams, and the objects that you remember.””
---
Love this!!
Thank you for sharing!
I’ve never seen anyone else reference Ben Lerner and The Hatred of Poetry before! It’s what got me here! Craic on then!
you definitely understand what you're writing about, I sent you my Substack page, about 27 poems, maybe you can give it a spin..
You put so much so well here. Finding poetry in the mundane, open-ended curiosity over certainty, writing as a kind of daily practice of noticing, how every kind of writing, if it's intended as art, is poetry at its core.
Thank you for these words. Felt like i was sipping coffee and wandering around time freely. I love words; their poetry within the poetry of time they create. I think the susurration words create and that i feel through them, even hear as if audible, is suitable definition for this ol’ girl’s joy and angst of reading, writing words, poems, life itself. Thank you for your way with words.
Love this: "their poetry within the poetry of time they create."
This is great! 🙌
Thanks so much, Christy!
I love the definition of "vague"
Isn't that wonderful? I'll never think of "vague" the same way again.
Best. Post. Ever.
Thanks so much, Meg!