Writing on a word

The suggestion for Poetry Thursday was to write about a word that we like, or a word we dislike. I started working around a word that my wife's Mother hated: succulent. I started wrapping a concept or set of thoughts around that one, but couldn't get it done in time to post -- it's a work in progress, another time.

Instead, I got political. It's not a good word.

War

Glory does not come in the red flash
of an improvised explosive device
or in dusty streets sliced by bullets
from a dispersed crowd.
There are no orchestral crescendos
in the soundtrack,
or technicolor battleflags
ready to drape shattered flesh
after the deafening noise and searing fire.

This is war;
a short word hollered in nationalist fervor
after we stopped caring enough to share
all the other words;
a word that can take a long time to finish
as the R echoes in our throats
and rumbles across the unseen battlefield.

Marriage protection disconnect

"We're not going to stop until marriage between a man and a woman is protected," said Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan.

Last week, the U.S. Senate failed to pass a constitutional amendment that would have defined marriage as being a union only between a man and a woman. The vote was 49-48.

Such a charade. Most of the arguments in favor of this amendment were simply a cover for prejudice against people who have different sexual preferences. Or, based upon sentiments such as Brownback's, they represent an actual fear of gays.

I fail to see how my marriage is threatened by two men, or two women, living together in a loving relationship. What is Brownback protecting me from?

This week's poetry assignment

It's Thursday, and we write something about our connection to poetry. I'm not publishing verse, but will share a few thoughts about my own experience with it.

I trace my re-entry into the poetry world back to Billy Collins and 9/11, of all things.

I heard an interview with Collins on that day (or the day after, memory is fuzzy). He was the Library of Congress Poet Laureate at the time, and someone asked him what poetry would be appropriate to read in the wake of the national trauma that we had just experienced. He replied that we couldn’t do much better than read some of the Psalms.

He seemed such a thoughtful, common-sense sort of person that day, very soft-spoken but heartfelt. He pointed to the Psalms, full of passages both spiritual and poetic. So I determined to read his material.

I liked it. He writes of everyday life, his lines are direct and friendly. Most important, he brings humor into his poetry – something rarely seen in the dense, sometimes obtuse poetry written by many major Western poets over the last three centuries.

He also speaks about the role of poetry. It shouldn’t be so difficult. We work too hard at analyzing it. Poems are wonderful forms of communication, a way to tell a story or reflect on images and ideas; but they don’t have to be over-wrought. My favorite is one of his shortest poems, Introduction to Poetry:

http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/001.html

I try to take his lesson to heart in my own material; I don’t always succeed. But we all keep writing.