{"id":1157,"date":"2006-05-04T10:27:00","date_gmt":"2006-05-04T15:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/2006\/05\/04\/poetry-thursday-7\/"},"modified":"2022-07-05T14:47:59","modified_gmt":"2022-07-05T12:47:59","slug":"poetry-thursday-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/2006\/05\/04\/poetry-thursday-7\/","title":{"rendered":"POETRY THURSDAY"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t remember when I started writing poetry, it seems to always have been a part of my life. I have poems in scrapbooks that I wrote when I was a freckled adolescent, odes to the cats and my friends. Poetry was all around me, it seemed. There were funny little rhymes and free-form snippets in my Highlights<\/a>, angsty teen horribilus later carefully cut out of Seventeen magazine and pasted lovingly onto construction paper, heavy hardback Children’s Encyclopedias full of classic poetry and fairytale stories that my mom read at bedtime, and which I still have, battered and tattered with love.<\/p>\n

Writing my own poetry was a matter of consciously snatching words from my brain and using a pen to force them to hold still on paper. Reading the poetry of the greats was a way to learn how others did it, how they found the ways of seeing and watching and observing, and then the ways of forming and metaphoring until what they wrote matched what they saw in some amorphous or clearcut way. It took me a long time to find that voice, and some days I know that I am STILL finding it, that it may never be found. How exciting, I think, that I will be able to continue developing and exploring that voice, which is so fundamental to the way I share my worldview with myself and others, for days and seasons and years ahead, until my eyes close for the last time. Here is my voice, then. The first was sparked by a line I read in a book I love. The second was written when I lived in Chicago, that large and lovely city.<\/p>\n

Walking the Mad Edge<\/b><\/p>\n

With a small
\nglittering smile coming before
\nshe was here
\nand with her were the sighs
\nof darkly patterned leaves
\nand the rustling of certain
\nsmall animals
\nin the underbrush
\nshe had so carefully
\nwalked through.<\/p>\n

With a long
\nlean cat-shadow following behind
\nshe was gone
\nand with her were the songs
\nof certain small birds
\nand the screams of the lonely
\nones clinging to her hair
\nshe had so carefully
\nlet down.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

The Weight<\/b><\/p>\n

I didn’t understand the world was so full
\ndespite having flown halfway around it
\nuntil living in this barnacled shore,
\nthis town, this wheeling chaotic anthill;
\nthese hardened shells of buildings.
\nIf I relax my mental vigilance
\nthe enormous realization: all these brains
\nhumming in tandem, random
\nbursts upon me; a dizzy array.
\nEveryone stomping on the earth.
\nEven God: a little mad with this immensity.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Where the Cool Kids are Hanging Out These Days<\/b>: Poetry Thursday<\/a> <\/p>\n

Bright and Bouncing, Beautiful Birthday Wishes to same_sky<\/a>!<\/b><\/p>\n

Really Great Writing Out There Right Now<\/b>: First Time in the Pool<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t remember when I started writing poetry, it seems to always have been a part of my life. I have poems in scrapbooks that I wrote when I was a freckled adolescent, odes to the cats and my friends. Poetry was all around me, it seemed. There were funny little rhymes and free-form snippets in my Highlights, angsty teen horribilus later carefully cut out of Seventeen magazine and pasted lovingly onto construction paper, heavy hardback Children’s Encyclopedias full of classic poetry and fairytale stories that my mom read at bedtime, and which I still have, battered and tattered with...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1157"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5283,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1157\/revisions\/5283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}