Poem! Verb!

"poetry as an action word"

Hello, Poetry Friend

The first time I did a book signing for The Joy of Poetry, I was confronted with a question: "How should I sign my own book, beyond just my name? As I walked to the signing table, pondering, it suddenly came to me: Happy poeming!

That is how I sign these notes to you.

I didn’t realize using the word poem as an action word hearkens back to its very nature.

“Poiesis is an action word, a verb, and it is the root word from which we have our word poetry. In the current times, we don’t perhaps think of poetry as an action word, yet from its roots, poetry is first an act of making and bringing forth.”

— Lancia E. Smith, from “Cultivating the Sacred Ordinary: A Poetry Collection”

A friend gifted me this slim collection from Cultivating Oaks Press, and it kept me company in January, while I was taking the first steps toward cultivating a poetry collection of my own. I wrote down poem titles on colored index cards and laid them out on the floor. Rearranged cards. Rearranged whole stacks. Rearranged titles.

Each poem I laid out is not only the fruit of the action of what I call poeming, but it is also evidence of something having moved in me. Something had to move inside before something could move outside — out of my pencil, into my notebook, and eventually, onto my computer. The good ones move all the way to a colored card.

As an example, let me bring you along as I trace the journey of one poem, written a year and a half ago.

• I really like Dave Malone’s poem “Recalling Light.”

• So does Callie Feyen, who wrote about it.

• Gotta poem that.

• There is a conversation I had a couple months ago that I can’t stop turning around in my head. That’s where I’ll begin.

• Uh-Oh. I see where this is going.

• Wish I wouldn’t have felt so compelled to poem this. Why must I poem everything?

• Type it up and let it hide on my computer. This one can never be published.

• I like to pull it out and read it every now and again.

• Send it to a contest it’s completely inappropriate for. Don’t hear back.

• Show it to a couple of poetry friends, who really like it.

• Change the title.

• Move it to a folder with Possibility.

• Send it to a contest it is appropriate for. Hear back a No.

• Move it to a folder for this collection.

• Make it the first poem on the first index card.

Poetry Journal

Here is Dave Malone’s poem, from his collection Tornado Drill, which inspired the poem and the journey I just described.

Read it. Sit with it. Read it aloud. Poem from it.

Recalling Light

It is the light I think
I recall. Was it church

or vacation Bible school,
the desks like pews,

when the sun's morning rays
ached to rest on shoulders

while the teacher dimmed
at the front, barely perceptible

like God. I remember now
the gospel the instructor ignored—

how the cypress floor danced
with golden dust in its hair.

–Dave Malone

P.S. Dave is hosting a poetry workshop May 7-June 3, online. He’ll be using Ted Kooser’s The Poetry Home Repair Manual. Check it out!

Whatever you are poeming/hiding/sharing, dear Poetry Friend, I wish you …

Happy poeming!

Megan