“The first poems I knew were nursery rhymes, and before I could read them for myself I had come to love just the words of them, the words alone. What the words stood for, symbolized, or meant, was of very secondary importance; what mattered was the sound of them as I heard them for the first time on the lips of the remote and incomprehensible grownups who seemed, for some reason, to be living in my world. And these words were, to me, as the notes of bells, the sounds of musical instruments, the noise of wind, sea, and rain, the rattle of milk carts, the clopping of hooves on cobbles, the fingering of branches on a windowpane, might be to someone, deaf from birth, who has miraculously found his hearing. I did not care what the words said, overmuch, nor what happened to Jack & Jill & the Mother Goose rest of them; I cared for the shapes of sound that their names, and the words describing their actions, made in my ears; I cared for the colors the words cast on my eyes. . . .I tumbled for words at once.”

~ Dylan Thomas, Poetic Manifesto

Although we will be spending much if not most of our time at our monthly H&H gatherings using poems to illuminate particular dimensions of the sacred journey, I will continue to draw our attention to the analogy between making a poem and making a life, poiesis, from which we derive our modern word poetry, originating as a verb form from the ancient Greek term ποιέω, which means “to make”.  The word insinuates formation and is used in biology as a suffix, for example, in hematopoiesis, meaning the formation of blood cells or in erythropoiesis which is the formation of red blood cells (thank you Dr. Wiki). Again, we’re considering spiritual formation as anthropoiesis.

Frances Mayes reminds that “Words are the building blocks of poetry.” We might ask what are the building blocks of a poetic life or MY life as a poem that I am co-writing with God? We might use poetic terms to provide another angle from which to assess or appreciate our lives as intentionally and consciously undertaken sacred journeys: internal rhyme, meter, soliloquy, simile. What is my life like? What is my life saying? When I listen to my life do I hear the harsh sounds of cacophony or the smooth consonants of euphony? Good poems always use fresh language. In the poem of my life, what are the fresh words that draw me or what are old words that have taken on new meaning for me at this time in my life? Intention, yearning, reveille, brother are such words for me.

Suggestion

So continue to play with words, to enter into relationships with specific words. Quarrel with some and court and fall in love with others. Add to your list of favorite words and create words of the day or words of the week lists. Make up at least one word a week. Make a list of words that you like to hear as opposed to words that you like to see. Are there words that you can taste? Smell? Feel the texture of? Look how each word in this one line from Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem, ”Pied Beauty,” sounds like what it is:

“With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim.”

Notice how your mouth moves when it says sweet and how it feels when it says sour. Above all, pay attention. The wild hope and indirect strategy is that maybe by paying attention to words, to sounds, to lines in a poem that we might be more attentive, reverent toward, and excited about the poem that we are living or not living but yearn to live.

This weekend/week choose a letter of the alphabet that you like. Is it a vowel? A consonant? Look for and keep track of words that use and feature (maybe even show off) that particular letter. By the way – why that letter? What do you like about it? Do you think you would have chosen it fifteen years ago?

Here’s a poem even more direct than yesterdays about the enjoyment of words and the pleasure of language (so that you know I am not the only loony tune –nice little song in those two words huh– out there).  Whenever possible read the poem (sent) aloud. Read them more than once. Read them slowly, chewing and pondering. Read them for the sheer enjoyment of the sounds (see Dylan Thomas quote) as well as for the revelations tucked within.  In any case, enjoy this one. It’s pretty clear that the poet does.

Saying Things

By  Mariyn Krysl

Three things quickly – pineapple, sparrowgrass, whale –
and then on to asbestos. What I want to say tonight is
words, the naming of things into their thing,
yucca, brown sugar, solo, the roll of a snare drum,
say something, say anything, you’ll see what I mean.
Say windmill, you feel the word fly out from under and away.
Say eye, say shearwater, alewife, apache, harpoon,
Do you see what I’m saying, say celery, say Seattle,
say a whole city, say San Jose. You can feel the word
rising like a taste on the palate, say
tuning fork, angel, temperature, meadow, silver nitrate,
try carbon cycle, point lace, helium, Micronesia, quail.
Any word – say it – belladonna, screw auger, spitball,
any word goes like gull up and on its way,
even lead lifts like a swallow from the nest
of your tongue. Say incandescence, bonnet, universal joint,
lint – oh I invite you to try it. Say cold cream,
corydalis, corset, cotillion, cosmic dust,
you are all of you a generous and patient audience,
pilaster, cashmere, mattress, Washington pie,
say vise, inclinometer, enjambment, you feel your own voice
taking off like a swift, when you say a  word you feel like
a gong that’s been struck, to speak is to step out of your skin,
stunned. And you’re a pulsar, finally you understand light
is both particle and wave, you can see it, as in
parlour – when do you get a chance to say parlour –
and now mackinaw, toad and ham wing their way
to the heaven of their thing. Say bellows, say sledge,
say threshold, cottonmouth, Russia leather,
say ash, picot, fallow deer, saxophone, say kitchen sink.
This is a birthday party for the mouth – it’s better than ice cream,
Say waterlily, refrigerator, hartebeest, Prussian blue
and the word will take you, if you let it,
the word will take you along across the air of your head
so that you’re there as it settles into the thing it was made for,
adding to it a shimmer and the bird song of its sound,
sound that comes from you, the hand letting go
its dove, yours the mouth speaking the thing into existence,
this is what I’m talking about, this is called saying things.

Mackinaw, toad, ham wing,
Dan