Leonard Cohen once said, "Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash."
I agree with that statement and would venture to take the analogy one step further. A story is akin to a stack of wood awaiting ignition or a tightly packed pipe tamped down prior to the first sweet draw. Poetry, in my estimation, is the smoke that rises spectral after the flame is lit. It curls, agglutinates, dissipates, is married to the wind and borne away to places unknown to the author.
Poems are stories told when no one is listening. Poetry, like smoke in Aboriginal cultures throughout the world, is a communication with the unseen and thus a very sombre, noble pursuit. In more than a few cultural periods in human history in the Western, Middle-Eastern, South-East Asian and Asian regions of our world, poetry was an essential practice of the nobility, of warriors and of holy men. It was usually taught and practised together with skill at arms; particularly archery, horsemanship, mathematics, geography, military strategy and music.
Without having evidence, I know that this was by no means a strictly male realm and I await future researchers who will uncover cultural traditions in various times and places where poetry may have been largely the dominion of women. It logically follows that somewhere, at some time, poetry was practised and valued by both sexes equally. If not, this is something to look forward to.
In our more recent days, one place where we will find a love for and appreciation of poetry, is in the figure of the high plains cowboy. Another is in the sailor’s message in a bottle. These two disparate environments are perfect for mentoring an abbreviated form of communication. Resources are tenuous and limited and the wind has the final say.
I began reading poetry at a young age and have continued until today. My very first influences were Robert Service, Rudyard Kipling and a few of the poets that are forced upon one in school curriculum. I later discovered translations of the great Japanese Zen poets and the Chinese Sages, such as Han Shan, the poet of Cold Mountain. Over time, I came across cowboy poets, ancient Greeks, Persians, Irishmen, Scotsmen such as Robbie Burns, Welshmen such as Dylan Thomas and many more. After intellectual prodding from Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and their ilk, I began to view song lyrics as being a species of poetry and the field to be surveyed grew vast indeed.
Poem writing began for me at around the age of sixteen. I made hand-bound books and gave them to my family and friends. I know that at lest a few of those are still in existence. This activity peaked about three years later and simmered ever after. It surfaces yet, when there is no other possible way to express what I am feeling and no one who might understand is near at the moment of inspiration. I once had the experience of writing a poem without knowing why I did so and years later found a perfect recipient for that exact message. This participation of the Great Spirit is the most precious aspect of poetry to me.
There are different categories of poetry, but I feel we are better served to look at those divisions and distinctions as a way of facilitating a discussion of the epic scope of the art form; rather than clubbing each other over the heads with rules. Having mentioned the R word, RULES, that is, another aspect of poetry immediately looms into view.
In different poetic traditions, just as in musical scales, there are rules. Very strict rules. This makes for a very precise and difficult intellectual exercise when composing a meaningful piece within the constraints placed upon the author by the rules of their chosen form. This is a multidisciplinary undertaking of which haiku would be one simple example out of the many complex formats that one may enjoy reading or try to compose in.
Poets who master their craft in those strict schools are deserving of much respect as humans, as artists, as engineers, as mathematicians, as philosophers, as story tellers and as medicine men and women, if you will allow. My attempt at creating poetry within a strict form-puzzle of my own choosing, occurred several years ago while playing nightly games of Scrabble with my wife, Nisa. At the end of our games, I wrote down every word on the finished boards and retired to my office.
My self-appointed challenge was to assemble all those words into coherent poems. It is much harder that it sounds in some respects, but becomes easier with practice. A year or so into this project, I challenged myself to make the random Scrabble poems rhyme. That was very difficult. As mentioned before, the self-imposed difficulty was the joy and the pain of attempting such a quest.
I decided to share some of my poems with listeners of the Bobcat Logic podcast, readers of Artemisia and fans of Radio Lillooet. As you read or listen to my poems, imagine that you are riding a pony through the sage and pines. Each poem you encounter is a scrap of paper, stuck by the wind to a bush. If you are a water person, imagine that each piece is a yellowed note rolled up inside a bottle that you just fished out of the sea or found along a beach or river bank.
Originally conceived as a Cycle of Seasons, these poems were gathered under the headings of Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. Between each poem on the audio version, you will hear a bell sound. At that sound, the paper in your imaginary hands is married to the wind and borne away to places unknown. You will have become a free participant, in the sense that when any two people sit together looking at clouds, both are free to imagine any shapes they wish from the vapour provided by the circumstances.
You may access the MP3 audio versions of this collection of poetry at these locations:
fin