.writing for the soul.

Throughout my life, poems have always held a special place with me.  Not that I can say that I am in any way a poet.  Nor can I say that I have a vast collection of poets sitting upon my book shelf.  As a matter of fact, I only have two:  Robert Burns and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.  The importance of what poetry is to me is that it has been an outlet to express oneself in such a way that it provokes emotion, not just of the writer, but moreso the reader.  Whether that emotion be joy, sorrow, anger, love.  There is no denying that there is a beauty in poetry.  If it were not the case, Shakespeare's plays would not hold as much weight and reverence amongst the masses if they had been written without meter and prose.   

So where does all this blabbering about poetry and such lead to?  Well, nowhere big really.  As some of you may know, with many of the life changes that I have had in just the last several years, I have become quite jaded with myself.   Numb.  Any fire, any creative, emotional blaze that burned within me has been dwindled to mere embers now.  Or so it seems.  I have been trying desperately to incorporate ways of creating something everyday.  ANYTHING.  It has been quite difficult.  Even a simple 2 1/2 x 3 1/2 card looks like a oversized canvas that I am to paint and there is no idea, no inspiration in sight.  So that is where poetry has, once again, made its way back into my life.  Pulling out the thoughts already cluttering my mind, and displaying them down on paper.  Perhaps, even as a drawing.  Not as a literal drawing with pencil or paint, but rather drawing with words, with metaphors.     

While on a break at work, I browsed through our poetry section.  I was actually on a mission to find W.H. Auden's works, but in the process found the above book:  Poetry as Spiritual Practice, by Robert McDowell.  I am just a few chapters into this book, and already I can sense that it has given me the encouragement that I need to write again.  Not that I was great by any means.  I just needed something that was going to help me to find ways to wake my emotions up.  And although my creative heart seems a little cool to the touch, those mere embers, covered up by ash and dust, will soon indeed spark a wildfire once more!  I hope so anyway. ;o)