I’VE been writing free verses, but thought I have to level up and study poetry of the masters.
Of course I picked my favorites -- Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, Oriah Mountain Dreamer, the Songs of Kabir, and of course... Pablo Neruda.
I tried to be scientific about, and studied the meters. It worked at the start, but would get stuck midway.
So I read some more of their poems and realized that the meters are best measured with the heart.
From there, the verses just flowed. Reviewing and finalizing required more connection with the heart.
That made a lot of sense, since poems are pieces if literature that are supposed to bring forth emotions.
Sometimes, indeed, science just doesn’t grasp it. It can provide the rhythm, but the ultimate outcome will always be from the heart.
“A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness,” said Robert Frost.
Which was what I wrote in my social media post after a whole day of writing: “What I don’t like about writing poems? I have to break my heart over and over and soar alternately. maka schizo, maka drain. Kapuy. And then I walk around in a daze like some brokenhearted teenager.”
Indeed, those words you read written by the masters did not pit those wirds straight from the thesaurus. They picked them out of their hearts, scrutinized and felt these, tasted them, regurgigated, them, and ate them up again to check how it goes down, over and over again.
Yes. Sometimes, it’s that gross.
“Poetry is what in a poem makes you laugh, cry, prickle, be silent, makes your toe nails twinkle, makes you want to do this or that or nothing, makes you know that you are alone in the unknown world, that your bliss and suffering is forever shared and forever all your own,” wrote Dylan Thomas. In short, UGH!
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