By Jim Hagarty
I have never done a survey, but I have a feeling that most writers, at one time in their lives, have tried writing poetry. Maybe, in fact, that is the way a lot of writers started out. Poetry, for me, was my beginning.
But decades passed for me between poems. Though I wrote for a living, poetry just kind of wandered away with my teenage years. I wrote songs all through the years and still do, so that is some kind of poetry, but different too.
When I started this blog, I didn’t know what to expect and still don’t. It hasn’t even been two months since the big launch.
But the biggest surprise for me has been how my inner poet has reared his head again. I have no explanation for this, but I am glad to be back at it.
Poetry, or at least the way I do poetry, is a different cat than storytelling or prose. It’s like doing a puzzle, but there is no picture on the box to guide you. It’s like paint by number, except there are no numbers, just a box of paints.
It’s a delightful challenge. I am not a free-spirited poet, so I try to colour within the lines. To take a whole bunch of words and assemble them in a format that is pleasing but also says something. That something might be serious or silly, but there is an economy to it all that can’t be ignored.
The trick seems to be to get things into a singy songy cadence and to rhyme things without making it look like you chose certain words just because they rhyme.
Knee deep in the manufacturing of a poem, I feel like a kitten with a ball of yarn. We both are having a good time.
But the cat is trying to unravel the yarn while I am hoping to roll it back up again.
Every professional hockey player relishes the opportunity for a game of pond hockey. No 50 pounds of plastic gear weighing him down, no coach yelling at him from the bench, no fans cheering and booing, lots of wind in his face.
Poetry is my pond hockey.
