Prompted by the question, “If someone said they liked to read “vaguely romantic” poetry, whose work might that be?” posted in a writing forum I frequent, I started going through my head for poets I love/have loved and poems that have moved me.
The first names that popped to my mind were Sarah Teasdale, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Al Purdy–and one line, “A girl freezes in a telephone booth” (which comes from beautiful, if ripping, untitled poem by Andrei Voynesensky).
Then I turned to a hardcover journal that I got when I was sixteen or so. It holds favourite poems and quotes from my teen years, transposed from the various scraps of paper and spiral notebooks that the words had previously called home, along with passages and snippets that have resonated with me in later years. I’m slightly in awe of how much poetry I used to read–and by the poets I gravitated to, long before I knew they were “somebodies” in the literary world.
While I’m a fiction addict, there’s something about poetry that calls to me and speaks to me in a way that no other written form does. I wonder if it’s because poems are created with the words we find within ourselves when all other words fail us?
I don’t consider it a great work of art or anything, but I had fun with the following poem late last fall and feel satisfied that I captured, at least in part, the mood of that evening. It’s also nice now, in the heart of winter, to remember there are always aspects of deep weather that I enjoy.
Winter’s Eve
All is crinkly-crisp this night
Golden leaves are icy folds—wrinkled, whiskered
Street lamps glow and show
Grassy-green, silver-sheened
Underfoot, crushed mint
Overhead, elf-wine scent
Mountain ash berries ferment
Clear sky
Cold sky
Black with star eyes
Woodsmoke sighs
It won’t snow yet
– Ev Bishop, copyright 2009
I hope you’re digging into the words within you this week. And if you can’t find a story, seek out a poem.
