Why poetry? What I don't know and what I do.

This will be a short one and probably repetitive of some of the things I wrote in 2005 when I started (and dropped) this. The last post about the Burnet and Austin Poetry Festivals got me thinking about poetry in general. Specifically, why bother? I have two answers of sorts. The first is, I don't know. Why struggle so hard to get perfect words in the perfect order with the right rhythm when you know you're got going to get anything more than satisfaction out of it. Ooops, maybe that's part of it. The satisfaction of getting something done that feels exactly right. Still, remember what Guy Clark sings in Cold Dog Soup? "There ain't no money in poetry that's what makes the poet free. I've had all the freedom I can stand." I can relate to that. What I can't do is stop trying to make poems. I like that feeling of satisfaction and, face it, I like it when you tell me that my poem moved you, touched you, made you laugh, or just that you liked it. So what's another good reason? That can't be enough, can it?

Maybe not, maybe the best reason for writing poetry is because you write prose. Huh? Yep, that's what I said. I'm convinced that the discipline of finding the exact word to create the phrase that makes the perfect picture or conveys the complete emotion that you want the reader to see/feel is a practice that will make your prose writing better. Oh, I don't think you want to be thinking in poetic terms when you write your novel. But developing that sense of how to create in the readers mind that picture/feeling with the fewest words and the smoothest line will unconsciously bring to to brighter, more complete pictures and truer emotions. That has to be worthwhile.

This all fits with my feeling about revision. I'm convinced that storytelling is the heart of fiction but the ART of fiction lies in revision. It's that editing process that causes you to--do what? --find the perfect words in the perfect order just as in a poem. I am reminded of that famous Oscar Wilde story which I'm sure I will misquote but the substance is there. He was said to have written to a friend and said, "Yesterday I worked all day on a poem. In the morning, I took a comma out. In the afternoon, I put it back."

Ok, an effort of mine:

I Have Sung My Soul Out


I have sung my soul out
in public for those anxious
for a turn to spread theirs
on the floor by mine
to be walked on by
practitioners of this
same arcane art.

I have read my poems,
mostly to poets,
in coffee shops and bars
and bookstores and
never believed that those
daggers or maces I forged
in the secret ironworks
where I truly live
ever found targets worthy
of their sanguinary tempering.

Now you come to take
away my greatest conceit.
My poem changed your life,
you said, but I can’t find
a single scar to show
that it changed mine.