Arlene Corwin writes

Reading Others

Often thinking everybody’s poem

Is better than my own -
Far from the verbal picture I could paint:
What is my special talent?
I say everything prosaically.
Images in poetry?
My own a metered verb, a rhyme;
A sense of time.
An adjective simplicity,
A minimum of story. 
Words new-fangled,
Turds of fancy.
Often shrewd, astute and canny.
But old-fashioned as a nanny;
New and true and unlike prose,
Not a dose of gross chaos,
My inner liberation says,
Nearly, almost, mostly, more or less ‘all goes’
Yes, “Anything Goes”
Not prose, not chaos comatose,
As of this moment, I accept that
I am worthy too, of being read by others.

I don't know if putting poetry on Facebook as well as other sites daily is constructive or a bother. I know that I tire of receiving so and so's renewed photos and descriptions of their daily life. With the poetry it's more a desire to get out into the world with something thoughtful and hopefully, universal. A social service, one might say. Do let me know in some way if the former or latter is true. I'm never sure about this - whether it's only a ruse of the ego or if it's what all artists are made for. 

[In response Arlene received feedback which prompted an immediate poetic response.]

Somewhere In The World

(Someone Is Reading What You Write)

Somewhere in the world
Someone is reading what you write.
I sent a book to someone who has never read a verse.
She telephoned this morning – expensive and long distance
Just to share in her delight;
That it was first, her very first
Poem to traverse the deserts
Of her heretofore quite undefined
Poetic mind.
Think happily!
Think positively!
Think! Feel encouraged
That your message courts a marriage
Between you and them
To last a time,
Create a team,
Perhaps a gem
‘Cause of the simple mathematics
In view of the facts that
Somewhere in the world
Someone is reading what you write.


 

Florian -- Sarah Lucas