Thursday, April 25, 2024

What Poetry Is

Who Poets Are

From Nikki Giovanni’s volume of poetry “The Women and the Men.” Which features Nineteen new poems and many poems from “Re: Creation.” Which was published by Broadside Press.


Poetry



poetry is motion graceful

as a fawn

gentle as a teardrop

strong like the eye

finding peace in a crowded room


we poets tend to think

our words are golden

though emotion speaks too

loudly to be defined

by silence


sometimes after midnight or just before

the dawn

we sit typewriter in hand

pulling loneliness around us

forgetting our lovers or children

who are sleeping

ignoring the weary wariness

of our own logic

to compose a poem

no one understands it

it never says “love me” for poets are

beyond love

it never says “accept me” for poems seek not

acceptance but controversy

it only says “i am” and therefore

i concede that you are too


a poem is pure energy

horizontally contained

between the mind

of the poet and the ear of the reader

if it does not sing discard the ear

for poetry is song

if it does not delight discard

the heart for poetry is joy

if it does not inform than close

off the brain for it is dead

if it cannot heed the insistent message

that life is precious


which is all we poets

wrapped in our loneliness

are trying to say

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