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:: word gathering ~ on poetry


" Surely, if something, anything, is to sustain your attention,

your passion over a lifetime, it must have the capacity to reveal

layers of meaning and value in

ever-fresh and unexpected ways.

To open your mind and heart with wonder enough

to have you come back for more,

and to surprise you again and again,

though each time with a different inflection or slant.

It must be an unending source of discovery, of reflection, solace,

and insight, of pleasure, and also of warmth and nourishment,

in the way a fire can warm hands,

and bread can fill the stomach."


{Roger Housden}


How poetry fills me up,

lifts my spirits to higher realms,

opens my eyes to a fresher way of being in this world.

Poetry is my sustenance,

that which I partake of daily...

somedays it might be a nibble here and there,

other days a full course meal.

No matter, I am filled.

Thankful for the gift of the words,

for the poets who set the lines flowing...

A life force.



I hope you enjoy the following words gathered in the spirit of poetry....


~ a poet of her world

~ a writer inventing her world as she moves through it

~ intimate as a lover's whisper, honest & true

~ in precise and passionate language

~ kinship of words

~ dawn colored, smooth, and nacreous

~ the sound of the words can be velvet on the page

~ words in the air come alive, like the things themselves

~ the natural pleasure of language - a happiness we were born to have

~ poems can change an experience by imaginatively naming or extending a feeling or thought

~ what is to become of you?

~ reading a fine poem makes me re-discover the bright freshness of creation

~ let the spirit marry the heart

~ the deep gratification of poetry

~ for awhile we forget the immediacy of ourselves and go with the witnessed experience

~ isolated on the white page, the poem seems to float in the white silence around it

~ when words from your own imagination, intellect, and experience flow through your pen

~ to the quiet shrine of the afternoon and the melancholy candles of the evening

~ if your blood is on fire with the love of language and the desire to make something with words, you

probably already know that

~ I am all for the swaying of the music and the brightening glance - the whole poem, plucked like a

warm, ripe peach from a tree

~ writing in your notebook - this is a pleasurable way to spend a rainy winter, or a lifetime

~ spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling

~ heavenly music of the spheres

~ some pull of inner necessity draws the poet to the page

~ pursue a rhythm, break apart logic, express an emotion, tell a story, or simply sing -

the impetus of having to, for the reasons named above, gives poetry its fire & urgency

~ I stand there a long time with the sun and the quiet, the earth moving slowly

~ suddenly, I realize that if I stepped out of my body, I would break into blossom



{words gathered from The Discovery of Poetry - Frances Mayes}


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