The Hello Bit

Welcome to my blog about the craft and sullen art of writing poems. I know, the blog title doesn't really scream poetry. It's a quote from my daughter when she was about three. We were taking a walk, she was in her umbrella stroller. An elderly neighbor passed and said Hello. She responded without missing a beat, and as though it was a time-honored greeting, "HelloGoodbyeOneDayTheEnd."

John Hewitt once said: "If you write poetry, it's your own fault." I've been writing poems since I was nine, and for many of those years I have not given it a second thought. But with my 6th collection coming out this August, I started wondering why for four decades poetry has occupied such a secret place in my life when it is so central to it. It's as though I was reluctant to admit that I ate food. When pressed at a party, I might confess "well yes, actually I eat. I do, I eat food."

I think it's partly because as a published poet, people somehow assume that this means I am qualified to hold forth on poetry in general, to expound on famous poets, if not quote them at length; or - horror! - to judge their own sheaf of verses. Or because poetry is generally considered such an odd thing to do, sort of like literary trainspotting. Or they assume that I am about to ask them what they think of poetry, forcing them to admit that while they know there is wonderful poetry out there, they have never actually been able to find any; that they just don't understand it.

It's this last point that has stood out most over the years. A majority of people seem to feel that while they know poetry has worth, they have never been able to figure out what the hell poets are saying. And when I pick up Poetry magazine, I am inclined to agree with them. My love of poetry is fervent but very selective. I know what I love, I know what my life would have been immeasurably poorer without. But how to define what is good poetry? How to explain what some poems mean? How to describe that rush of joy, that feeling of rightness when I read a poem I love?

If you are thinking this blog will explain poetry to you, I'll be sorry to disappoint. All I can do is to describe what it means to me to write a poem, how I do it, the mechanics of the thing, the place poetry occupies in my life. Maybe in describing that I will be able to shed some light on my forty years of  entirely solitary and mostly secretive scribbling.

Most poets eventually break down and write a poem about writing poetry. My favorite has always been the first stanza of Dylan Thomas's In My Craft Or Sullen Art. 

"In my craft or sullen art

Exercised in the still night

When only the moon rages

And the lovers lie abed

With all their griefs in their arms,

I labor by singing light

Not for ambition or bread

Or the strut and trade of charms

On the ivory stages

But for the common wages

Of their most secret heart."