New Year's Resolution: make new friends with poetry

Few of us enjoy poems we don’t “get,” but often, the problem isn’t with the poem so much as our approach to poetry. Maybe this seems obvious, but poems are not nonfiction books ready for one-time reading. Nor are they newspapers built on a pyramid of who/ what/ when/ where/ how and sometimes why.

Poems are meant to be read and re-read and….

Poems worth getting to know may be shy, seldom revealing themselves to passersby or quick acquaintances.

Poems want to be known for who they are, not necessarily why or how, but for the experience they bring.

Poems are adventures, waiting to happen.

Poems are playground experiments with words.

Poems are thoughts and feelings or stories scored with musicality.

Poems may analyze your deepest self but do not need you to analyze them!

Poems are meant to be enjoyed slowly – like good wine, good music, or good company.

As happens with new friends, each new meeting of a poem brings a new discovery. This might be an image that begins to clear or an insight you hadn’t considered or a sound that rings a chord in you.

May your New Year ring with enjoyment – the joy meant to occur in a renewed or newfound love of poetry.

Have a blessed and happy 2013!

© 2012, Mary Harwell Sayler

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