Sunday, February 27, 2011

Specializing

WHY is it SO HARD for me to just focus on ONE thing and learn it? Why can't I "specialize" in something?

God has blessed me with an ability converse well, being able to discuss a wide range of topics with people in various forms and forums, but I am frustrated by not knowing a lot about one thing.

I've been especially interested in poetry and wordsmithing lately, something beyond this blog, something more...I don't know...Sophisticated? Refined? Formal? Well-structured? Professional? Not sure exactly the right word (which is why I am none of those things! *laughing*)

I like to read poetry. I'm moved by it ways similar to how I'm moved by music. It's a visceral experience. Every fiber of my being can move into my interpretation of the body of work. My whole soul can be consumed by it.

I want to author words that will consume you. I want to portray images and evoke emotions that make you ache, cringe, writhe, settle, smile. I want to do that in poetic form. And I want to be good at it.

I have found myself over the last couple of years, reading some poetry and learning snippets of the lives of these poets. These particular ones (Syliva Plath, Anais Nin, Anne Sexton, to name a few) are dark and charged, if that makes any sense. I believe most of them even committed suicide, which suggests a thing or seven in of itself, no?

Perhaps it's because I'm not haunted enough, or jaded, lonely, tortured enough.  Would these character issues, these soul struggles, these fissured facets of personality, somehow be a catalyst to me exercising my poetry brain and hands?

*shrug*

I will always have my blog....and that's a good thing.

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Until next time, I will leave you with this jewel:

With Mercy for the Greedy



For my friend, Ruth, who urges me to make an appointment for the Sacrament of Confession

Concerning your letter in which you ask   
me to call a priest and in which you ask   
me to wear The Cross that you enclose;   
your own cross,
your dog-bitten cross,
no larger than a thumb,
small and wooden, no thorns, this rose—

I pray to its shadow,
that gray place
where it lies on your letter ... deep, deep.
I detest my sins and I try to believe
in The Cross. I touch its tender hips, its dark jawed face,   
its solid neck, its brown sleep.

True. There is
a beautiful Jesus.
He is frozen to his bones like a chunk of beef.
How desperately he wanted to pull his arms in!
How desperately I touch his vertical and horizontal axes!   
But I can’t. Need is not quite belief.

All morning long   
I have worn
your cross, hung with package string around my throat.   
It tapped me lightly as a child’s heart might,
tapping secondhand, softly waiting to be born.   
Ruth, I cherish the letter you wrote.

My friend, my friend, I was born   
doing reference work in sin, and born   
confessing it. This is what poems are:   
with mercy
for the greedy,
they are the tongue’s wrangle,
the world's pottage, the rat's star.

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