– Walt Whitman, handwriting Sabrina Ward Harrison
If you don't know about SWH, you should read this post.
This got me thinking. What makes a great poem? Is it the prose, or the feeling you have while reading it. For me, it's the latter.
I've filled journals upon journals with poetry since I was a kid, and I always come back to the short ones. The ones that can capture a felling or an idea, in just a moment.
Say good-bye to the woman
we once knew
Don't need her anymore
Take her with you
we once knew
Don't need her anymore
Take her with you
– Unearthed from my journals, 1998
HERE IN THIS MOMENT
I'M GONNA VIBE WITH NO ONE ELSE
THERE IS A CONVERSATION I NEED TO HAVE WITH ME
IT'S JUST A MOMENT TO MYSELF
– MACY GRAY, "A MOMENT TO MYSELF"
a #1 New York Times, USA Today, and international bestselling author and comic book writer. As an award-winning, Bram Stoker Award-nominated young adult author of 12 novels and graphic novels, she has been published in 51 countries and 38 languages and her books have sold more than 10 million copies worldwide. Kami’s best known works include the Beautiful Creatures series, Teen Titans: Raven, The X-Files: Agent of Chaos, The Lovely Reckless, Broken Beautiful Hearts, and the DC Black Label comic Joker/Harley: Criminal Sanity. She is also a cofounder of the Kid Lit book festival YALLFest.
Epigrams are the best…I’ll have to think and get creative.
epigrams!!! AGH!!! bad memories…
ooh this sounds fun…. just for the heck of it ima go and write something. its been a while.
Cool scrawled Whitman quote. We’ve got the whole passage on a poster above our bed: “This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”
— Walt Whitman
p.s. you might want to credit him. this makes it look like Sabrina’s
I love writing poems, although I usually write them for other people. I must say that there is usually ALOT of feeling/emotion behind them. Here is what popped into my head when I read your post:
Here in this moment as I sit here contemplating my life,
The one thing I can say for sure is I love being his wife!
How’s that? I’ve never been one for free verse, always like the rhyme better.
J – I love that you have that poem over you bed & I added Whitman. Was thinking so fast, I just took for granted that everyone knew the poem. (Bad writer behavior)
My favorite short poem – sorry I can’t write one – is from the book “I Don’t Want to be Crazy”, which is a memoir written in prose. The main character struggles with panic attacks (like I do) and writes herself a note one day – in verse/poem form – to calm herself down. It says:
Recognize that you are going to get out of this –
that you always get out of this,
that you are going to live,
that you won’t go crazy.
I am telling you that you will live,
because you always live,
because you are strong
and beautiful.
…not even sure if that counts as a poem. I have odd ideas of what a poem really is.
I’ve never been a huge fan of poetry, maybe because I don’t understand most of it. But Shel Silverstein poetry I actually LOVE! Even if it is for kids I have all his books and I love every single one of his poems. Here is one of my favorites:
Listen to the Mustn’ts, chile, Listen to the Don’ts
Listen to the Shouldn’ts, the Impossible, the Won’ts
Listen to the Never Haves, then listen close to me
Anything can happen, child, Anything can be
I’ll try to write one but I doubt I will be able to.
thats supposed to be CHILD in the first line, not chile. Haha!
Jordyn, I love that one!
Hooray for poems! Here’s one of mine.
I put a flower in my hair
because I felt like it
and started laughing
because it was so quiet
and big
that my voice echoed off the sky,
and I wrote this poem
simply because
I like the way the pen glides
and how my hand
casts a funny shadow
and the words
seem to come from midair.
Ooh, I forgot how much I love short poems. I have a bunch of poems that I just go back and revise, year after year, playing with rhythm and all that fun stuff. Here’s the final verse of one of them:
Come sit with me, my oldest friend;
I’ll take your hand when you grow weak,
And stay with you, and soothe your cares
And face the specter as he stares
And know your parting words though you don’t speak.