Yesterday being a Friday, my blog entry was a poem. It was a reflection of something going on in my life, as poems generally are. When I woke up this morning I found myself thinking about the relationship between poetry and the events in life that inspire it. Coincidentally, several friends, after reading the poem, called me up today to say that they loved it, and also to ask, with some concern, whether I’m ok. Which I guess is also a kind of compliment on my poetry. 🙂
The relationship between poetry and reality is funny though, isn’t it? A poem takes some aspect of reality, and then sharpens and polishes it until the underlying emotion is honed to a fine blade, reflecting light while cutting like a knife, clean and bright and able to draw blood.
Prose is quite different: It is best at describing the messiness and complexity of things, and there is a different, rougher kind of beauty in that. All the clash and bother, the sturm und drang of our imperfect selves in constant collision, that’s the stuff of real life.
In truth the woman I was thinking of yesterday is now in a relationship that is clearly right for her. The man she is with has a lovely graciousness, a calmly accepting and open soul, which perfectly complements her madcap headstrong wildness. Watching them together is quite beautiful. You can see how these two people fit together, and how one day their children will have the opportunity to draw from the best of both: Her wild soul and his calm one.
I am self-aware enough to know that she and I together would probably end up as a disaster – two ornery individualists each trying to charge up a different hill at the same time. We’d tear everything apart in no time, like a locomotive with two engine cars, each pulling in the opposite direction.
And yet I think that yesterday’s poem was completely true to the feeling that inspired it. Perhaps the truth is something like this: We dream in poetry, yet we live in prose.