Why Poetry

Some thoughts on poetry.

April is National Poetry Month. Poetry is my avocation, better yet, my passion.

You might rightfully ask what inspires a broadcast journalist to dwell in a poetic world. The quick answer is a balance to the daily tragedy of life. The long answer involves acknowledging the heart, spirit, and nature and the peace that comes from that awareness.

Each broadcast day contains many of the sorrowful and tragic stories of life. Emphasis is placed on information that separates our unique, yet interconnected, human nature into undesirable parts. We labeled them as hate, prejudice, violence, intolerance, and greed.

Poetry, whether its rap or metered verse, quatrains or sonnets, laughs and cries, clarifies and condemns and brings the intellectual and emotional senses into a radiating body of meaningful words. Poetry holds, sometimes forever, an emotion long past, a desire forgotten, a wish remembered or a splendor that’s vanished in the illusion of time. It is also a minute connection to the elegance of verbal choice; to the beauty of form and to the emotion of words put fitly together on the palate of the mind. Poetry is both raw and sophisticated art available to the reader and listener as a subjective creation similar to the appreciation found in images created in oil or marble.