Poetry is older than the written word. They represent thoughts and emotions engraved into the very edges of our souls. We remember how a poem—even just a little snippet or a lyric—made us feel at a certain moment. These words, such simple little utterances or scratches on paper, mean something important to us.
Before the written word, we had rhythm. And meter. And structure. These elements helped us to remember the important things we needed to survive. These compositions helped us to etch longer stories into our memory.
Have you ever heard a line from a poem—more likely a song—and you suddenly remembered a specific event in your life. Whenever I hear Whip It by the group Devo, I see an image of me walking through my maternal grandparents’ garage in Cypress, California with a transistor radio in my hand turned up as loud as it would go. This is the same battery-powered radio I snuck into my bed as a child to listen to Radio Mystery Theater when we lived in North Chicago.
It baffled me why my father never considered himself a learned man. He received his high school diploma after I made my entry into this world. For some reason, he thought that made him less intelligent. But this man could look at a framing joint and tell me what length of two-by-four timber and at what angle he needed me to cut it. Being the intelligent teenager I was at the time, I would scoff and disbelieve. When I did as he instructed and brought the cut piece to him, it fit so tightly I often wondered why we even needed nails.
A bookcase holds an honored place in my library. He built it for my mother, an avid reader. I have stripped it and refinished it. I can find no nails or screws!
One winter when I was still in high school, before I joined the US Navy, our family was sitting in the dining room around the fire. My sisters and I were talking about poetry and lyrics. Out of nowhere, my father recited the first four stanzas of The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe. Twenty-four lines spoken perfectly.
We never knew he had this locked up somewhere in his head. I asked him years later how and why he held those words. He smiled. It was because of a woman. My maternal grandfather was a teacher, he held a Master’s Degree in English. My father told me he needed to impress not only the woman that became his wife and gave birth to me, but he also wanted to impress her father.
The recent plague that drove much of the world into hiding seems to have obliterated the open mic events once common among coffee shops and other gatherings. However, and completely by chance, I came across a notice of one occurring the evening after I saw the announcement.
Downtown Rogers, Arkansas hosts an Art Walk event on the second Thursday each month. I have written hundreds of poems. I have read them at open mics and even impromptu readings. I will sometimes sit and just read them to my wife—something I have not done as much as I should lately and need to fix.
I went by myself, knowing no one involved. I signed in. Ninth or tenth on the list. Each presenter read for around four minutes. The topic was love being the night before Valentine’s Day. If you know anything about my poetry, I don’t write a lot of sappy poetry for public consumption. The ones I have written are for my soulmate and only for her.
The two poems I selected came from my collection Newspaper Reading. Neither of them could be considered love poems per se. Dear John reflects difficulties in relationships. Things taken for granted and miscommunicated. The Gurney is about remembering the lives of those leaving this mortal coil, how everyone needs to be remembered and to be remembered is to be loved.
Happy Valentine’s Day. And take care.
