Why Poetry?

April is National Poetry Month in the United States. I doubt many people know (or are excited) about that, especially not when our attention is focused on total eclipses, presidential trials, wars around the world, inflation, going to work, doing the laundry, watching TV, and sleeping.

Who cares about poetry?

I do.

Why? 

I earn next to nothing when I get published, most often just a copy of the journal in which my poem rests for the handful of people who might read it.  When I share a poem on Facebook or this blog, I usually receive a smattering of “likes,” certainly not enough to build my self-esteem or popularity, if that was what I was after.  When people ask what I do, and I say that I’m a poet, they usually shift uncomfortably before changing the subject.  And yet, “I persist,” as do my poet companions.

It seems to me that there is no more appropriate time for the creation of poetry than right now while our world trembles and smolders and “wars uncurl as one country eats another /like a snake swallowing its own tail” (A Pail of Cherries, by Rosemary McMahan).  Unprecedented, unbelievable, unconscionable have become words as worn out as dishrags.  How can a person retain any sense of sanity, much less beauty and meaning?  My answer is poetry.

Poetry becomes the microcosm in the vast macrocosm of endless and often empty words where we flounder to stay afloat.  Poetry distills feeling, thought, verbiage, emotion, everything into a still small space, just as Andrew Marvell describes a summer garden “annihilating all that’s made/To a green thought in a green shade” (The Garden). It is the “spontaneous overflow of powerful passion” (William Wordsworth) shaped so precisely that it can pierce the heart, heal the soul, arouse conviction, shake apathy, offer solace, and, yes, even impact the world. If a picture can paint a thousand words, a handful of words can paint a picture of a moment, an experience, a transcendence, a reality, a tragedy, a miracle.

That’s why I read and write and share poetry. Poetry helps keep me balanced; it helps keep me human; it helps keep me spiritual. These days, retaining my humanity/spirituality become more precious by the moment, and so I write.

Rosemary

---

Today

Today, a pregnant woman across the world
worries about giving birth in the midst of
a sniper-laden war zone.
I walk past a quince bush birthing
blooms in mellow tangerine.
Today, another young girl,
another young boy,
is sold into slavery, trafficking
and driven
into the unspeakable.
I bend to lift
the shy lavender face of
a Lenten rose
from the dirt and raise it
to the sun.
Today, the fidgeting murmurs of
nuclear war whisper over
a ruler-straight horizon while
plump pink bulbs
like fat red robins
perch on a silent magnolia tree.
Today, raging rebels overturn
poor governments
on distant islands
and desperate families
seek flight.
I notice the purple sapphires
crowning the slender silver limbs
of the redbud.
A Mexican man, trimming trees,
stops his work to chat with
me as I take my morning
walk. He is earning money
to go back home
next year to the cerulean
waters of the Caribbean
while today the vortexes
of green-striped hosta
begin
the unwinding
of hope and
the copper-colored dog
wags its tail
on the other side
of the invisible
fence.

(c) Rosemary McMahan