What is poetry?

What is poetry, someone asked . . .

It rhymes sometimes

Emily Dickinson says “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that it is poetry.”

It’s the Serenity Prayer, the Lord’s Prayer, Psalms and Proverbs

Poetry is what music is made of

Poetry tells stories in very concise ways

Storytellers can be prosaic or poetic, and I like them to be poetic

In poetry pulses creation, and when you read a good one you know you are alive

Once a year I skulk around some musty used bookstore looking for my annual poetry book purchase

This year I bought Robert McDowell, Poetry as Spiritual Practice: Reading, Writing, and using Poetry in Your Daily Rituals, Aspirations, and Intentions.

Robert McDowell says poetry can be spiritual practice

Mr. McDowell also says “you need to know poetry is written in lines, not sentences, which conform to the breathing of its creator rather than to the artificial signposts of punctuation marks and conventional grammar.”

Well, yes, after 22 years of school and graduate school and a decade of editing, I could use some relief from the breathing patterns of punctuation.

As I read I’ll tell you more, but I’ll end by saying that his sub-title is longer than a Haiku and maybe could have been one so I’ll leave you with a sort of sub-title review Haiku of McDowell’s book.

Read and write poems
Deeper meaning in daily life
You will be surprised