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I'm a Minnesota Girl, living in the south. I tell my friends I try not to talk and think like a Yankee, but sometimes I slip up!

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

The Poem That Can't Be Written


The Poem That
Can't Be Written



is different from the poem
that is not written, or the many

that are never finished—those boats
lost in the fog, adrift

in the windless latitudes,
the charts useless, the water gone.

In the poem that cannot
be written there is no danger,

no ponderous cargo of meaning,
no meaning at all. And this

is its splendor, this is how
it becomes an emblem,

not of failure or loss,
but of the impossible.

So the wind rises. The tattered sails
billow, and the air grows sweeter.

A green island appears.
Everyone is saved.


~Lawrence Raab 2009



It is poetry month. To begin, one of my new favorites....poets enjoy writing poetry about poetry.

2 comments:

Kelly said...

How fun! A poem about writing poetry!

All you poetry lovers are inspiring me! I need to read some poetry!

lol, my word verification was "carsick"!

Donna said...

Did I ever tell you Marc's poem metaphor?

Marc says a novelist writing a novel is like a parent raising a child through adolescence - they give it everything they've got - everyday! Then the day comes when they have to let go. They can't change anything at that point, but they let go and hope they did their job well enough for it to stand on its own and be well received by the public.

A poet writing a poem is like a parent giving birth to a child and then leaving it on the church steps with a note that reads: I'm done!

I loved that!!

Happy Poetry Month!