Poetry

I was looking through a journal entry from last year, and it made me laugh.  I was working through some journal prompts, hoping for inspiration, and thinking that if I could at least write something, it would be better than nothing.  That day's prompt was to write a rhyming poem about a poem, and here's what I came up with:

A poem is something you write
About trees or your love or the night
And after it’s finished,
Imagination diminished,
You sit back and hope it don’t bite.
© Pamela Roy Howell, 2024

I've never been much of a fan of writing poetry.  Honestly, I'm not all that crazy about reading most of it.  There are a few that I enjoy, mostly written by Shel Silverstein or Ogden Nash.  A couple might be favorites simply because I can say that I have them memorized:  "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost and "Richard Cory" by Edward Arlington Robinson.  In general, though, if there's not a melody, poetry is not my favorite genre to read.  Writing it is something I'll do if there's a grade at stake, but I don't like it and I'm 100% certain I'm not good at it.  I am also 100% ok with that, considering how little time I've spent doing it.  

I do respect poets, though.  To give words to one's thoughts in a way that adds that extra dimension of artistry is astounding to me.  Authors of prose can create pictures in their readers' minds, but poets add color and motion and music to the pictures.  A different kind of life comes through a stanza of poetry than through a paragraph of straight sentences.  The talent required to bring that kind of life out of mere words has always eluded me, and I admire those who have it.

I'm attending a Bible study right now, on how to read the Bible.  Understandably, we're talking a lot about story.  Often the word "story" is used to describe fiction--telling a story is a euphemism for telling lies, and even if an account concerns factual events, calling it a story implies at least some element of embellishment.  But one's life IS a story.  The good, the bad, and the ugly, that's the story.  The truth and the lies, the history and the novelization.  And the poetry.  I've tried to sit down and write my autobiography a couple of times, and have given up in despair, because it's boring.  It's so mind-numbingly boring I find myself falling asleep.  And it's not that nothing has happened in my life.  I've won awards and performed for thousands and had children and gotten an education and made a difference in the world (mostly positive, I hope).  My life story is boring because I think of my life in prose.  This happened, then this happened, then this happened.  How different would my life be if I thought of it as poetry?  How different would my perception of myself be?  

I've been told that the creation story in the Bible is poetry.  In some Bible versions, it's written in verse, rather than in sentences.  Instead of "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1), it's

In the beginning God 
created the heavens 
and the earth.

What if the creation is God's poetry?  What if God added color and motion and music to the story He was writing through His creation of light and oceans and dry land and fruit and animals . . . and people?  How does that change your perception of humanity?  We are "fearfully and wonderfully made" (Psalm 139:14).  We are composed, carefully crafted, and lovingly generated by the master Poet to bring beauty, creativity, and love into the world around us as we follow in His poetic footsteps.  

Dear reader, you are wonderfully made.  You were placed here intentionally and with purpose.  You are beautiful and worthy of love.  You are a poem.



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