Freeing verse

Ever since I visited Professor Murphy at the Sewanee Writer's Conference I've been thirsty for more understanding of the historical development of poetry and the styles of certain poets. I am definitely not a poet; I don't have the sense of language that is required. My thinking is too rationalistic. I don't 'see' like a poet. But I like fooling around with words. 

So, I've been reading a lot of poetry lately. Nourishment has come from a simple book: Risking Everything: 110 Poems of Love and Revelation, edited by Roger Housden. (He edits other books of poetry.) From this book I have been fed by Mary Oliver, Naomi Shihab Nye,Fleur Adcock, Czeslaw Milosz, Robert Bly, Galway Kinnell, Pablo Neruda, E. E. Cummings, Rumi, David Whyte, Rainer Maria Rilke, and others. 

Reading and rereading these poems has given me a sense of the Presence. Poets assist us in breaking through the veil. They take us beneath the surface of the ordinary. They breathe hope into our lungs.

Now I'm chasing Wm. Wordsworth and Tennyson. At this location in my journey the Romantics and the Transcendentalists resonate with my longings. I checked out a book on Wordsworth--essays on his writings. I love his feeling for the 'motion and spirit...that rolls through all things'; and for his sense of the sublime. 

I think that for people who feel alienated from organized religion, poetry can become a source of strength and revelation. 

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