An invitation to be present, to make shared meaning, and to get moving

Swansea, Wales

I understand that most people who read this blog don't read poetry. It's foreign to most of you, in the way that plants that grow on the other side of the planet are foreign. It's so far outside your awareness as to seem irrelevant to your lives. But when it's outside my awareness for too long, I get antsy.  Poetry helps me settle into all of myself. Maybe if you give it another chance, it can help you, too.

Here's why I think "more poetry is needed":
  1. Poetry grounds meaning in the senses. It uses sight and sound not just as containers for meaning, but as part of how meaning is made. In poetry, words point you toward lived experience, rhythms get under your skin, and the way the words  look on the page changes how you hear them and what you imagine when you do. It's as if the function of poetry is to say "There is no meaning outside the way you live your life. Presence is what counts."
  2. Poetry only makes sense when the reader and the writer cooperate. When a poet chooses a very few words to hold a very complex meaning, she does it expecting that the reader will fill in the spaces with her own experience of the world. We need more invitations to work together and fewer explanations that keep us in our own seats.
  3. Poetry moves through rhythm. Its relentless movement pulls us from one word to the next and reminds us that meaning is supposed to make stuff happen.
I think that life is complicated. We need focus and perspective and movement to get through it. More poetry is needed.





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