Thursday, September 24, 2015

Playing with words

There are many ways to play with words: crossword puzzles, acrostics and such.  Poetry is another way.  I am not a great poet but I do enjoy converting ideas, impressions and feelings into words.  I wrote these poems more than 7 years ago.  I leave them on the web to be ready to show anyone who is interested in examples of poems I have written.  I haven't found great fun in wrestling with a form so haiku or sonnet or whatever, I don't particularly want to find a word of the dictated length or one the rhymes.  I respect rhyming and I find it harder to express a thought in rhyme than in just any words that convey my thought.


I was a drummer in high school.  Not the highly skilled tympani kind in an orchestra but one of a section of drummers who marched in formation in the drum and bugle corps.  I like rhythm and I respect the energizing power of a beat.  The poem on this web page This Too Shall Pass Away was one I read and liked back when I was ten years old.  I liked the idea but I also liked the rhyme and the clear rhythm.  It might be related to English and Scottish ancestors, the ones Franz Joseph Haydn said needed to be hit in the ear.  It might be Irish ancestors, the group who have often taken the instrument of song and recitation, the harp, as their symbol.


Lynn has written quite a few poems, too.  I often think of her "Time Islands" and the memorable poem "Warning".


I don't know much about the history and evolution of modern poetry.  I gather that people sometimes sneer at rhyme. They sometimes write paragraphs and call them prose poems.


There are poets I pay attention to, several of them now dead but their works live in me and many others.




--
Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Twitter: @olderkirby

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