Has poetry saved someone’s life?
Their channeled lines have certainly saved mine,
Warm rhythms born on my cold strife.
It’s poured forth as a constant wine
Confluencing my tributaried self –
But they were most prosaic lines
Produced by this slim moral elf
Until I found a common voice in form
From Blake and Keats upon my shelf.
The voices in me made me warm,
But Frederick Turner brought me to the place
Where one is strange and in the norm,
That borderland of half-filled space
Of scribbled silences unheard until
I learned to weave poetic lace
So I could learn how to fulfill
My destiny, to ensure the world’s rife
With life upon earth’s wooded hill.
Troy, I skimmed through your November poems on a whim, not paying much attention until this one--Salvation--caught me and made me stop, and re-read it, 3 times. Perhaps the alternating rhyme caught my attention, but if so, it was rather, the very true things you said about poetry which made me smile and like it: the
ReplyDelete"slim moral elf" so desperately needing to join the conversation begun by Blake, Keats, and Turner. But the 2nd last stanza most struck me: I remember Turner discussing this "borderland" in his class on Beauty (he used some African word for it though, to capture the area just beyond the well-trod paths as one enters the jungle). Nice! Mixed metaphor in 2nd stanza.
Mark Watney
chinjikijilu
ReplyDeleteThanks for pointing out the mixed metaphor. As you can see, I fixed it.
I'm glad you liked the poem. Good to hear from you, Mark!