Let Your Life Be a Poem

April 21, 2022 in orange desk

It is National Poetry Month every April. I celebrate poets all year and poets are always keynote speakers at my Life is a Verb Camp. Why poets? Because they see into things in a different way. They go deeper into sense-making than mere mortals usually do, and they use language to fuse equivalences we may have felt but never voiced. They reassure and challenge us in a form that teeters on the edge of the visual and spatial impact of a painting or a sculpture. They are magicians with words, not seeking to reveal but to bare and bear the magic.

We have been scared off from poetry by our English classes in school that demand we find the theme, the meter, the allusions and metaphors, but we don’t need to do anything other than read a poem aloud, feeling the sound of the words in our mouth and on our tongue. Poems should excite our love of language in just that way. A physical knowing, not an intellectual exercise.

Poems shift something in us. Our shifting is subjective–it doesn’t happen with every poem, and it is a different shift for each reader.

Here is one of my favorite poems, this one by Nebraskan poet Ted Kooser in which the shifts in size and perspective delight me:

Flying at Night

By Ted Kooser

Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations.

Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies

like a snowflake falling on water. Below us,

some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death,

snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn

back into the little system of his care.

All night, the cities, like shimmering novas,

tug with bright streets at lonely lights like

his.

Among his many books of poetry, Ted Kooser also wrote The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets (2005), which is a delight.

A new favorite writer and poet is Ocean Vuong. This video of him talking about grief is absolutely beautiful: “Just because you have seen it does not mean you have known it.” You can read more about him here. “As a child,” he says, “I would ask: ‘what is napalm?’”

Essay on Craft

By Ocean Vuong

Because the butterfly’s yellow wing

flickering in black mud

was a word

stranded by its language.

Because no one else

was coming — & I ran

out of reasons.

So I gathered fistfuls

of ash, dark as ink,

hammered them

into marrow, into

a skull thick

enough to keep

the gentle curse

of dreams. Yes, I aimed

for mercy —

but came only close

as building a cage

around the heart. Shutters

over the eyes. Yes,

I gave it hands

despite knowing

that to stretch that clay slab

into five blades of light,

I would go

too far. Because I, too,

needed a place

to hold me. So I dipped

my fingers back

into the fire, pried open

the lower face

until the wound widened

into a throat,

until every leaf shook silver

with that god

-awful scream

& I was done.

& it was human.

Speaking of poetry, Fred Peretz Cohn, has written a beautiful novel in verse form that you should read. As has Elizabeth Acevedo.

Osho has written, “Let your life be a painting. Let your life be a poem.” Yes, this. What kind of poem are you writing with your life?

About Patti Digh

Patti Digh is an author, speaker, and educator who builds learning communities and gets to the heart of difficult topics. Her work over the last three decades has focused on diversity, inclusion, social justice, and living and working mindfully. She has developed diversity strategies and educational programming for major nonprofit and corporate organizations and has been a featured speaker at many national and international conferences.