Some reflections upon the craft

PRAYER AND POETRY

Poetry is like prayer. For some it is prayer.


Poetry is like prayer in two senses: it is a daily exercise; and the more you do it the more poetry forms you. The purpose of prayer is not a shopping list of favors sought and graces desired. Nor is the purpose of prayer to add anything to the eternal. To be sure intercession and praise are part of prayer, we reach out to the eternal for aid, and we praise the eternal creator for our being, (at least in our western tradition). However, the true purpose of prayer is to form the believer in the image of the eternal.

So it is with poetry. The practice of poetry is not about the production of any one particular poem. Poems come and poems go, they succeed or fail as may be, but the practice of poetry goes on. The poet may write the same poem over and over again; writing about the same event, exploring the same themes connected to that event in several different poems. However, the process of writing those very similar poems forms the poet--turns the writer into a Poet.

The writer of verse and of poems writes, the poet sees. It is the seeing, the intuitive recognition of potential poems, that is the mark of a Poet. The writer, the beginning writer relies on “inspiration ", which we may define as external stimuli, the poet sees the poem in the situation and circumstances around him. The change from writer of poetry to poet comes about through the practice of poetry.