manipulation

Today’s Poetry Thursday prompt asks why I love poetry. Truth is, I am a harsh judge. In order for me to like a poem, it has to either take me so far away from myself that it ends up a part of me or put me so deep into myself that it results in a resounding understanding of the world. That’s a tall order. Few poets can do that all the time. Sylvia Plath is consistent. Frank O’Hara, Clarinda Harriss, Thomas Lux—they do it most of the time. I strive to do it but know I can’t.

The poem that does this is the poem I mean. Lots of us can do it once.

Now, to tell you in a poem why I love poetry—and include all the birds and trees and flowers, close up—is impossible, just as a single snapshot couldn’t tell you all the reasons I love birds and trees and flowers.

One problem for the writer (resulting in a prize for the reader!) is economy of language. I can’t include the little words, too many prepositions or articles or pronouns. Another problem is that I distrust a dogmatic poem, and I ignore a wishy-washy one. A poem has to walk the line.

What I most like about poetry is its ability to manipulate us. I like the you of it and the me of it and the fact that I am sometimes not the me, that you are sometimes not the you. Yet we always are, you and i. We are we.




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it*

can reach inside your chest
and turn your heart to glass
suck it out drop it from a cliff
laugh while it shatters
and moments later
paste the splinters
and heal the seams
so no one could see
but you

can press its lips to yours
wrap its legs around your waist
smack you stab you bend you
love you.

can become a murder of crows
and take off with the sky
leaving a cavern where
your lonely cry is drowned out
by the silence.

can make angels sting
and devils sing

can draw you a map
lead you to a treasure
long buried in your own soul

can hurt to ignore it
as much as to heed it.

can make you think
it is about you
the way you look right now
your hair
breath on my neck
oh

it can make you.






*it



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