(photo credit below)
Elizabeth Marshall, fellow Tweetspeak Poetry barista and mischief maker, shares a reflection on poetry to wind up our month of Making Manifest. Someday I’m going to meet this sweet spirit face-to-face, and I’m delighted to welcome her into this space today. Oh, and be sure to read all the way to the end… there’s a giveaway.
Years ago on an island vacation, I found a message-in-a-bottle in my path as I walked the shoreline. Tossed out by two sailors years before, it was indeed a mysterious encounter. Discovering poetry has felt a bit like that moment. How we ever crossed paths, met and fell in love is part mystery and part love story.
I have only loved and written poetry for a few short years. And I wonder where I was before, how I really lived “back then” and what I missed. Poetry invites me to see infinitely more of God’s world. It asks, “Did you see the hummingbird hidden, hovering while feasting?” Poetry allows me to be—no, insists I be—vulnerable. And it gives me permission to be brave through turmoil and triumph. It helps me see intricate detail, to simplify and condense it into a small package. To lap up the lovely, soak in the pain and reformulate it from a cryptic experience into something called poetry. But mostly it allows me to net and hold beauty.
I often define my life now as “before” and “after” poetry.
Poetry has been a lens for seeing through the fog of life. I see clouds cauliflowered one moment and as an exaggerated brain-mass the next. The language of poetry allows me to process, define, redefine, and reconstitute creation and beauty, to distill pain and difficulty. Re-fracturing through the poetic lens pours the beautiful chaos and magnificent creation through a sieve. It allows me as a poet and a partaker of poetry to take bite-sized, manageable portions from the generously-set banquet table that is this God-given world.
I’ve discovered poetry is the artist’s science to explain the unexplainable and define the undefinable. It can wrap words around moments and capture with all the senses what the photographer can frame merely, though beautifully, through a camera’s visual lens
I’ve learned it is both a translator of life and a container to hold the mystery. Poetry is as love in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. It bears, it forgives, it seeks, it does not judge. It is a giver, not a taker. It slows the hurried, comforts those who mourn and celebrates with those who rejoice.
Poetry can multiply beauty and decrease pain. It is the license to live with unbridled passion as an investigator, interpreter, and archivist of all that unfolds and unravels before me
When I as a poet am fully present, I smell, taste, see, hear, and touch the wonder of a fragment in time. Then I can dress that moment in the proper word garment and present it as an offering.
I am not a poetry expert, and because it’s grace-filled and inviting, poetry doesn’t require that I be. God calls me to live fully, with passion. And poetry gives me the eyes and the language to open the wonder, to reveal those cauliflower clouds and waves like tongues licking the shore. It invites, hopes, dreams, and seeks. It both makes me a child and grows me up. It rocks me to sleep and wakes me up.
God, the giver of gifts and life, has given me a love for life through a lens of poetry. I view life now with a different slant, and seeing anew has been akin to knowing Him afresh.
“Come explore the world through the eyes of the poet. Come hear God speak and make Himself manifest.” That has been the whisper of the Creator to this child.
An introverted extrovert, Elizabeth is a curious noticer who lives by the sea in a small Southern shrimping village. Poetry wakes her up and rocks her to sleep. She loves the word “and” and contradictions. Her poetry and prose can be found on a blog which bears her name. Visit her at wynnegraceappears.com where she sees the world through a lens of grace. She is honored to have had her work appear at Tweetspeak Poetry where she is a Guest Writer and Social Media Associate. Her poetry has appeared at Burnside Writers Collective and elsewhere. Find her on Twitter and Instagram @graceappears. Married for 25 years, she is momma to three growing-up children.
(Caribbean Sea near Jeremie, Haiti)
A QUESTION FOR YOU: How is poetry a part of your life? Or is it? If not, why not?
A GIVEAWAY: Would you like to taste and see how poetry can sweeten your day? I’m giving away TWO one-year subscriptions to Every Day Poems–a poem in your inbox every weekday. And ONE copy of How to Read a Poem by Tania Runyan. Just leave a comment below–preferably answer the question. 🙂 We’re not fancy here. Grace the Grandgirl will draw the winners from a hat–probably a pink one–on Wednesday, June 4.
THANK YOU! I’m so grateful to everyone who took this journey through Making Manifest: On Faith, Creativity, and the Kingdom at Hand with me. Without you, I may have gotten sidetracked. You’ve helped hold me accountable to the finish, and it’s indeed been a month of holy collisions and connections. Thank you to all those guests who agreed to share their words in this space. And a huge hug to Dave Harrity who agreed to walk alongside us and offer encouragement in our private Facebook group. It’s been a beautiful and memorable month. And we’ve only just begun.
feature photo credit: Mykl Roventine via photopin cc
thank you Snady – it has been wonderful indeed
poetry has always been where I live
leaks out of me
even as I attempt to capture prose
I’ve come to a place
where I don’t try to draw a line between the two
a good place, I believe
If we’re tapping into the poems we are, how can the poetic help but slip into our prose?
I loved the places where poetry and prose are mingled and mixed. It is a beautiful melange of words and phrases. I have a hard time often drawing any distinction. 🙂
LOVE not loved.
Though I write mostly prose, I do dabble in poetry from time to time. I love how Elizabeth describes poetry in this sentence: “When I as a poet am fully present, I smell, taste, see, hear, and touch the wonder of a fragment in time. Then I can dress that moment in the proper word garment and present it as an offering.”
I so believe that this should be our attitude in life – living in and enjoying the moment and presenting ourselves daily as an offering of thanks to God.
Blessings, Sandy!
I loved that phrase about dressing a moment in the proper word garment. Love to you, Martha.
I often feel like an explorer, off to uncover all that encounter. Poetry helps me to decipher mystery. However, some things come out on the page a different shade of mystery 🙂
Poetry is (more) a part of my life now–I can relate to Elizabeth- than it ever was before I read LL Barkat, particularly God in the Yard (there’s that book again). I am more attuned to seeing the lines in the wood along the fence as I walk, notice the way the light shifts in the trees in the afternoon, pay attention to voices, birds….the list goes on and on.
I am writing a lot more of it.
And more often–I like the fact that one is forced (sort of Twitter-like) to be brief and succinct. Words matter. A lot.
I am having fun with words…………that is the point, yes?
Beautiful post here–thank you Sandy for hosting. Thank you Elizabeth for saying, ‘yes’.
Having fun with words–the point, yes.
And “that book” did a number on me, too.
Such a gift to walk this poetry journey with you. This days I am just hungry for poetry. And yes there is both challenge and freedom in paring down long paragraphs and phrases into something intense and beautiful.
My scattered moments of participation hardly counted but it’s still been a journey of awesome, albeit interrupted discoveries. Thank you for hosting this remarkable month. Thank you to Dave for providing the stimulus to even consider taking part. I’ve loved this time of Making Manifest, and seeing how the freedom of creating with words can bring me closer to the Creator.
I’m not a poet in the traditional sense of the term. Oh, I write poetry occasionally, but it’s not my first love, despite being what I first dabbled with as a child. My words get tangled when I concentrate too much on how they feel. I prefer to let them gallop out any which way, and corral them later during revisions. Poetry, at least mine, doesn’t like being reworked.
Still, I think Elizabeth’s definition of poetry is wonderful. It’s going into my notebook…
“…poetry is the artist’s science to explain the unexplainable and define the undefinable. It can wrap words around moments and capture with all the senses what the photographer can frame merely, though beautifully, through a camera’s visual lens.”
Your “scattered” moments of participation counted a big bunch, Carol! I loved how you you played with words.
So… poems are wild horses? 😉
Awww, I would love to see that notebook. Honored I will have words in it. Grateful. wishing you lots of poetic moments.
Poetry has been a part of my life off and on since I was 18 (oh, that;s 50 years ago!). I have loved reading poetry, but the writing of it has depended too much on external influences, ups and downs of life, and mood swings.
This month has encouraged me to make it a habit to write at least a little something every day. For that, I thank Sandra, David, and all of the other participants!
I love that, Rosemary! That you’ve been inspired to write a little each day and not depend too much on “external influences.” Except those bring something to the paper, too. Yes?
Sometimes when I take a break or a rest from writing, I do not realize why until I read my first pieces after the break. It is like I was refueling. There is a balance, right between staying away too long and staying away from writing just the right amount. Something to ponder 🙂
That poetry is as love, that’s really something. Bears, forgives, seeks, does not judge. That’s important, what you’ve said there. And that it gives and does not take. Yet, I think, poetry does require something of us.
Not for its own sake, but it does require of us. 🙂
Good point, Lyla. 🙂
Yes it does require something active from us. Not passive. It is like a relationship in some ways. We get in there and dance with the poetry. If we both don’t give and take then someone might get stepped on 🙂 🙂 But poetry in my experience is rather a gentle soul when I am staring at a blinking cursor. Now that would be an interesting comment thread. 🙂
“It allows me as a poet and a partaker of poetry to take bite-sized, manageable portions from the generously-set banquet table that is this God-given world.”–love this sentence!
P.S. Sandy, don’t enter me. 🙂
I’m guessing you spend a lot of time at that table, Megan.
And everyone… keep your eyes open for Megan’s book that’ll be out next year through T.S. Poetry Press–The Joy of Poetry!
I am so excited about this book. WHY IS THIS THE FIRST I HAVE HEARD OF IT. Can’t wait. Honored for your generous feedback. You can munch on that sentence as much as you’d like.
This is just such a lush post. It’s prose that exudes poetry with every brushstroke–just exquisite, and so meaningful. I love Elizabeth’s interpretations on poetry’s meaning and essence. There’s no need to reiterate; she’s said it all so eloquently. And I shall never forget her imaginative cloud description! Loved those! LIke her, I came to poetry later in life, though I was surrounded by it through my mother’s own love for poetry–whether she read it to me when I was a child, recited it from memory, or wrote her own. And I am a singer. I think music and poetry are inextricably linked. But *I* never wrote it until, in my early thirties, I went through a difficult trial. Though I am a prolific writer and journal-keeper, my pain was difficult to articulate. I found I could only write in brief pulses, and it came out as poetry. My pain had a rhythm all its own. This happened years later after 911 and then after my father’s death. I think that poetry’s small container allows us to articulate pain and grief without drowning in them. However, poetry is also a graceful vessel to hold beauty, and all those qualities that Elizabeth mentioned. I think, like her, I can define my life before and after poetry. It’s part of me now, and it will usher me one day straight to the presence of the divine Poet, where I will throw poems in bottles at His feet.
Sandy, thank you for such a magnificent venture into poetry, into beauty made manifest via Harrity’s marvelous study. This was such a revelatory life-changer. I’m indebted to you, your friends, and all blog readers!
Gratefully,
Lynn
“I think poetry’s small container allows us to articulate pain and grief without drowning in them. However, poetry is also a graceful vessel to hold beauty . . .”
Love this, Lynn. And then the thought of throwing poems in bottles at His feet. Which leads me to thinking about Him bottling our tears… tears turning into poetry…
TO DAVE HARRITY
Dave, I wasn’t sure if you were still receiving threads from the blog post where you had dialogued with me about holiness and creativity. I assumed you woudl be reading here, so I wanted you to be able to read my response. My apologies for taking so long to get back to you. And thank you again for the invitation to think. I greatly appreciated all you had to say. Lynn
http://sandraheskaking.com/2014/05/something-close-holy/
🙂
Thank you, Elizabeth for this lovely reflection. And thank you, Sandy, for the genius of hosting this fun month and for each of the beautiful posts in that month. Such richness!!
Thank you, Diana. This month has far surpassed any of my expectations. It’s truly a blessing to walk out this life with you–the good and the hard.