Each year on March 21st is World Poetry Day. Today I offer a Baker's Dozen of Poetry Wisdom to celebrate this Day. I hope you enjoy them. I pray you make note of each word by each author.
1. Poetry is music written for the human voice. Maya Angelou
2. I have nothing to say / and I am saying it and that is / poetry. John Cage
3. Poets paint with words, painters speak with works. Annibale Carracci
4. Good poems are the best teachers. Mary Oliver
5. Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down. Robert Frost
6. We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words. John Fowles
7. Poetry is the language in which man explores his own amazement. Christopher Fry
8. A poem should be wordless / As the flight of birds. Archibald MacLeish
9. Poetry is an expression, through human language restored to its essential rhythm, of the mysteriousness of existence. Stéphane Mallarmé
10. Poetry is to prose as dancing is to walking. John Wain
11. Poetry is idealized grammar. Oscar Wilde
12. Stanzas are rooms, and a poem of them, a house. Robert Wallace
13. Poems are not language but the content of the language. Mary Oliver
How about that! Thank you for reading. Thank you for taking some of these wise words under your belt.
Each of your readers will get something different from each of the baker's dozen. Who can resist #5 for sheer imagery, if nothing else?
ReplyDeleteI am neither a poet nor an educated reader of poetry, but I enjoy it, especially when it is read out-loud by others. Bob Dylan figured this out when he put his poetry to music so he could reach everyone. His lyrics (poetry) made him famous, not the music he composed, or his singing, or his playing ability. Because of the rhythm of a good poem, #9 makes a lot of sense to me.
RB
Oh. My. Gosh. You really hit the nail on the head. Thank you, RB.
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