I have been posting some of my poetry in the past few weeks. And I think it might be helpful for many to be given some perspective on reading poetry. I wrote something about this in the introduction to my book, I AM, Poetic Reflections Through The Gospel of John. The poems in the book are not nearly as gripping as some others that I have written, but I think the introduction will be helpful. So, for the next few weeks I will post segments of this introduction.
Are you afraid to read or use poetry? You are not alone in these days. I hope I can introduce you to the force of poetry that will make you tremble with Jeremiah and cry out from fire in your bones.
Presenting a book of poems at the end of an era where poetry has been so little known and loved requires special introduction. This relates to a fact that many of you may doubt. Is this dark antipoetic era over? I believe it is suffering its noisome death throws as I pen these words. Elementary school teachers were the Light Brigade that broke in on its artillery coming down upon its battlements with marvelous child-friendly poems by authors like Shel Silverstein and Jack Prelutsky. And now even adults seem to be opening up, if slowly, to the power and pleasure of verse.
I went to school in the 1950s and 60s when the joy of poetry was being expelled. I knew then that I was out of sync with the coming trend by finding an affinity toward something most of my friends thought strange. The first writing I ever published was a poem I wrote my sophomore year in college. I had not thought about trying to publish when I wrote it, but several friends urged me to send it to The Student, a national denominational magazine with a circulation in the tens if not hundreds of thousands.
But magazines like The Student were the last hold-outs in a society that had already banished Homer and Hiawatha from secondary education. I wrote a few poems over the years that I sent unsuccessfully to multiple editors. I wrote one in the early 1970's that I sent dutifully to editors every five or six years. After 20 years of rejection slips, I received a check for the poem. They paid me $12 on acceptance! That year three more of my poems were accepted for publication. I was amazed.
I did use some of my poems in sermons and they were usually well received. But I have to admit that at least 90% of my poems over the years were written for my wife and family, simply because there was no outside market for them. Doors were cracking open for publishing poetry before it occurred to me that I should have been writing poems with God as my audience, whether anyone else would read them or not. Still, poetry like a sermon cannot be written without concern for a human audience. And some of us need to help people know how to read, enjoy and benefit from poetry.
http://watchinginprayer.blogspot.com/
http://thinkinginthespirit.blogspot.com/
http://theanchorofthesoul.blogspot.com/
http://writingprayerfully.blogspot.com/
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