The Passion of Poetry

Last night I was feeling pretty passionate about an issue. Last week and in the last couple of weeks prior, I have felt passionate about a couple of different things. Being who I am now, the passion faded quickly leaving behind either resolve or remorse, I won't know fully until I do or don't do those things which I felt passionate about. These times reminded me of how I used to feel when I was younger, when I was quite often passionate about various things, and much longer than just for an evening. There are many things I don't like about my younger self, but the passion I felt is not one of them.
One of the things I used to be passionate about was poetry. Writing it. Reading it. Talking about it. Going to poetry readings. The great thing about this particular passion is that it was, and is, self-feeding. I think that good poetry is passionate. Now as you may guess, I am using a broader definition of passion than romantic love, I am using it in the sense of a strong emotion or idea that fills one with caring about said emotion or idea. If you are passionate about poetry and then read a passionate poem, your own passion grows, sometimes exponentially.
When I think about the things that have changed my life, that have made me the person that I am, a few categories become evident: events that have happened to me, things I've read, things I've heard and things I've done. Poetry fits into all four of these categories. I remember being given a book of poetry and how that created such an incredible bond between the giver and myself. I recall reading a Shakespearean sonnet in high school and for the first time really getting what it meant. I'm not talking about the "A Student" kind of thing where I was regurgitating rote-learned symbol imagery, but really having that emotional Epiphany, enough so that through the whole poetry unit of the advanced English class, I ate lunch in the teacher's classroom to talk with him about the poetry we had read in class that day and the other poetry he had given me to read on my own. I remember the first time I went to a poetry slam and how utterly impressed I was by these literary rock stars on a stool in front of me swaying to the sing-song verse delivered by their own voices. I recall quite vividly both the first time I read Howl and heard it read by Allen Ginsberg and understood more about Beat poetry than any professor or documentary or reminiscing parent could ever impart to me. I remember a class assignment in college presenting a classic English poem and reading Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge with a swaying body and as sexually suggestive voice as I could manage and knowing that was the way that Coleridge meant it and defending my interpretation to the professor with Coleridge's own words explaining the woman and the opium. I have been the poet, the listener, the reader the poem. Simply, because of poetry, I have been. And that which has been might still be.
I'm sure that I must have seen it written somewhere, but have always carried the idea within myself that the best expository or prose writing can tell you all about emotion and maybe even illicit emotion, but the best poetry is emotion. A great novelist can give you secret insights into the love between two persons, but a great poet can give you that love.
Not every poet is a great poet or every poem a great poem, but even the mediocre can be genuine and give you something that you didn't have before. Not that I'm espousing that anyone read bad poetry or mediocre poetry when there is so much good and even great poetry about, but unlike some other things that you might read, a mediocre poem can provide enough insight to keep you going until you can find the great poem. And to be frank, once you love poetry, bad poems are there own if different motivation to find great poetry so that you can re-assure yourself if nothing else.
To be honest, I can't understand how anyone could not be passionate about poetry. Whether it's the young singer calling on the words of a legend, or a cowboy explaining the beauty of the night's sky, or an athlete relating one of her great motivators, or a rowdy drunk yelling out his favorite bawdy limerick, or a teacher sharing a book with an eager student, there is a poem that speaks to every person.

First Day of National Poetry Month

It's April, which means that it is National Poetry Month. Long before I became a novelist, I was a poet, and that has never left me. I don't wait for April to roll along to read or write poetry, but this does seem like a good time to write about it.
The best way to start is with my favorite poet. Since I first read the opening lines of Howl, I've been a fan of Allen Ginsberg. It was not my first exposure to the Beat movement, but it was my first exposure to Beat poetry. It was nothing like what I thought poetry was - missing were couplets and iambic pentameter, missing were short simple statements, missing were obvious references to love and/or nature. In their place was this massive, run-on, jumbled up, be-bop rhapsody. Ginsberg had his finger on the pulse of something big and real and most importantly something that other poets never talked about. Long before I ever smoked myself high with marijuana or even drank as a red wine jug-holding bikkhu, Ginsberg blew my mind.
That opening line - "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked," sets quite a bar. My first thought was and still is, 'what is it like to be part of a group that includes the best minds of a generation?'. Now that this has been a part of my life for more than 25 years, I have more thoughts on it, about it, of it. Have I seen any of the best minds of my generation? I certainly have seen good minds destroyed by madness, some which reformed in new and beautiful ways, and some that never came back. Did Ginsberg really think at the time that he was seeing the best minds of a generation, or was he speaking in a more hyperbolic way as I do. If he did mean it as applied to his friends how did he feel about the fact that some of them likely were the best minds of his generation? What does he mean by madness? I've always taken it to be both literal and a metaphor for drug usage gone too far.
A great experience is hearing Allen Ginsberg read Howl. Once he gets worked up to it, his delivery becomes absolutely captivating.
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If you haven't read Howl, or would like to read along while listening to the above presentation, you can find the full text of Howl here.