Nothing Rhymes With Orange...

When reading two works about poetry, one by A.E. Housman and the other by Mary Oliver, I have come to realize something. I am not a poet. I have on occasion scrawled a few lines with more fluidity than a paragraph of summary ought to have but I am not a poet. I seldom think about the things Oliver discusses in her Poetry Handbook, or at least I think about them completely differently. I thought it interesting how she talked about how so much thought goes into one particular sound in a poem. Her classic example is the difference between rock and stone. When I hear the word rock, I think of just any old rock you find on the ground; asymmetrical, random and jagged shape, earth tones. When I hear the word stone I think of slightly wider range in color and smoothly rounded either refined by man or ocean. She goes into detail explaining the differences in the actual sounds of the words and she arrives basically at the same place I did. Rock ends with a muted sound which makes it more definite. Rock has a short O and stone has a long O sound. I feel as though I am a visual picture person and thought about it differently than that of a word poetry person.

Despite the fact that I would not classify myself as a poet, I still greatly appreciate reading poetry. I don’t know this for certain but I would guess that the authors of both of these works are poets. I think that when somebody is a poet nothing but poetry comes from their pen. Even their grocery lists must look like shimmering haikus. I love the way that poets paint with their words. It is such an interesting medium and I look forward to getting to try it myself.