Why I Write Poetry

I suppose I could have entitled this post simply, "Why I Write," but it applies more specifically to poetry than prose.

I write because I love to write. Even when the words are not coming easily, I know they will come eventually. It may be a week, or a decade, but the right words are there to be found and joined, like a lock waiting for the most lovely and perfect key.

Poetry is part inspiration and part construction. It's a mood and a state of mind better than any drink or drug. It's a craft more satisfying than anything done with wood or stone (especially if you're me). And yet, when one writes poetry, one can be crafting with wood, or stone. With words, one can paint any picture, dance to any music, be the music and the dancer and the chisel and the clay all at once.

Nothing absorbs me like working on a poem. It's the only thing that will make me forget to eat or drink or sleep. I don't think about poetry when I'm driving because I fear that it's unsafe to do so. I need to gesture when I think of a poem, as though conducting or shaping it in the air. I love the gift of a image or a line. I love the linking of sounds together to make something new. I love the tweaking and fussing to make a poem better and better. It's the best kind of hike in the woods, the best kind of mud pie. It's like flying, even if the poem is a nitty-gritty down and dirty dark little piece.

Poetry throws open the windows and airs things out. It's the rocking of a boat in the open ocean. It's manna and wine. It's cave and morning, the truth of death and isolation, the truth of renewal and Indra's net. It's not all things for all of us, but it's something for each of us, and I love to be part of that music of the spheres, even if I'm just one little off-key kazoo.