I once read a poem about a horse who poked his head through a barbed wire fence to nibble grass on the other side. Something spooked the horse and he jerked his head sideways, tearing a jagged hole in his neck. The author of the poem witnessed the event when he was a child growing up in a rural area.For me, poetry should convey as much imagery as possible using as few words as possible. Here’s a poem I wrote in my 20’s for Joni Mitchell after Rolling Stone magazine published an interview with her complete with a full page photo, her golden hair bright as sunshine, and I had the title:
The Sun Is A Poet
See her rise, impeccably blonde;
a tidy package of light
tied together with a mischievous chord.She strums the rainbow
three colors at a time,
then leans back to comb the tangles
from her rays.
I write small poems because I have but small talent. Kaddish by Allen Ginsberg is a long poem but not one word is unnecessary. It’s about his mother’s mental illness and how it affected the family. She sees Hitler’s mustache in the sink, Allen gazes at a photo of her as a girl in Russia playing the ukulele, she is cowering under a bed in America and he is a 12 year boy not knowing how to help. So many images, he paints a complex, beautiful, sad portrait for the reader.I don’t write much poetry these days. The world is devastating and my descriptions of it are inadequate. Here’s a poem I wrote in my 50’s, possibly the last poem I’ll write:
Joan Baez Came To The Barrymore
“Madison, I walked on your leaves of gold today,” she said,
and her guitar strings crackled
like the spice-stained pages of a cookbook
that refugees write in when they arrive
bearing memorized recipes and fire.
When I wrote it I was enthralled with all things Jewish (still am), and had just learned a new word – pogrom. The economic migrants who are flooding Western Europe and North America aren’t who I had in mind. A genuine refugee is an asset, he appreciates freedom and respects the customs of his new country.