On Being A Poet

Poetry is more often than not a personal expression of feelings, emotions, thoughts, fears and ambitions. It’s amazing that so many people are willing to expose themselves in words, phrases, verses and stumbles. I’ve often wondered what it is in one’s mind that trip-flares those mental images to come exploding out on paper or the computer screen. What was the catalyst there?

For me, it was Dinkytown back in the day. Grey’s Drugstore, the Ten O’clock Scholar, Vecchio’s Pizza, Al’s breakfast, and a dozen or so squalid denizens of commerce became the perfect environment for my own cerebral wanderings.

After a less than satisfying experience of living in Europe and then back to Minnesota, I was still finding my way inside my head. By then, the West Bank had become a hippie haven. I loved my new side hustle as a volunteer at the local public television station and was just beginning to tip my toes into that vast cauldron of cerebral exploration called writing.

Into that Pandora's box of life puzzles, I slowly, tentatively began to write out snippets, verses and mind-story poems to satisfy some kind of craving inside my soul. My creative cave was a studio apartment carved out of a dilapidated, rundown former mansion on University Avenue near the University of Minnesota.

Fast forward some fifty plus years and I’ve got a new book of poetry just published and a sense of great satisfaction in finally exposing some of those thoughts, aspirations, doubts, and fears into print if for no one else but myself. Which begs the questions, why does ‘Broken Down Palace’ matter so much now?

The origin of ‘Broken-Down Palace’ was innocent enough. After spending about three years writing poetry and song lyrics, I found a wonderful distraction with blonde hair, a ready smile, brilliant mind and a very deep connection at a level I had never felt in my life before. My collection of poetry and song lyrics was set aside and life moved me in new directions.

Last year, I realized that one of my many aspirations not yet reached was to write music for three plays I had written during the pandemic. They were all musicals and I knew exactly what kind of music I wanted for each song in each one of the plays. When I returned to Palm Springs last fall, I took my old gray collection of poetry along. The idea was to wrestle lyrics out of those poems and use them to create songs for my plays.

After perusing my poetry, I found those poems wouldn’t work as lyrics for the specific songs I had created for each play. But I discovered something else in the process, that my poetry wasn’t that bad, even after 40 years of hibernation. What I had created was a real honest reflection of my life back then. It was the people, places and things that permeated my daily life. The words and verses truly reflected ‘where my head was at back then.’

Not long after my book of poetry was published, I happened to attend two recent poetry readings which shed light on poets and poetry. As my screenwriter friend, Bob, likes to point out; poetry is a very personal thing. The two poetry readings could not have been more different.

The first was at a host’s home in South Minneapolis. The poet was a gifted woman who worked in Chicago for an organization promoting and cultivating poetry readings among the masses.

The second reading took place in Saint Paul. There were four poets at that gathering and each had their own approach to poetry writing and reading.

What struck me about both readings was the diversity and differences in the type, style, and content of the poems read. It was a good reminder that poetry is, in my mind, a very personal exercise in communicating. I don’t much care for the rules, regulations, standards or proper way of writing poetry. I’m guessing many readers can see just that in my work.

I’m not sure I’ll be publishing a second book of poetry. I think I took the best of the best and am satisfied with that first run. It was a fun, satisfying exercise in self-fulfillment. The poems speak for themselves and I’m on a different track now, heading toward the great vernacular unknown.