An essay on the art and soul of a poet

COMPOSING THE PERFECT POEM

Poetry has been in my blood since I was a little girl. Rhymes enchant me. Like dominos falling into each other in wave like synchrony, my brain alphabetically riffles through words that rhyme with other words with the ease of a computer. Yes, poetry is in my blood.

When something gets in your blood, it demands attention and perfection. The perfect rhyme and rhythm is a quest for me each time I find a line of verse running amuck through my head. One minute it isn't there and the next, well it is.

It begins as a phrase and the phrase repeats itself, gaining momentum. It is almost like music - and not surprisingly, sometimes a melody accompanies the phrase. Many of my poems turn into songs this way. Sometimes the tune is there first, and words compete to fit into place like fluid puzzle pieces in a Dali painting.

In the summer of 2005, I took a trip to Ireland. By myself almost all the time, I drove around that idylic island nation and found poetry. It was at the end of every country road and around every bend. It met me in ancient moss covered ruins and cemetaries dotted with eroded celtic crosses made of limestone. Poetry found me walking the beach alongside the churning waves on the wild northwestern coast. It followed me into warm, dark wooded pubs where Guinness flowed like the Liffey. Ireland did not just inspire me to poetry. Ireland is poetry.

I sat atop isolated slopes in the Wicklow Mountains and played my tin whistle for the sheep that grazed in the neighboring valley below. I talked with locals in Glendalough and felt the peace that St. Kevin surely felt there when he built his round Tower near the Lake. As the cold Atlantic Ocean lapped the rocks at my feet, I stared into pools of water that lay stagnant between the foam and there saw life teaming in miniature colonies. There was poetry in the lined faces of old men in from the fields and in the timeless beauty of the women chisled with the knife of borne pain. Rhymes came to me as I toured medieval buildings filled with folk and faerie tales in quaint Ennis on the River Fergus.

Poem after poem, verse after verse, I wrote volumes in the 21 days I spent touring the land of my forefathers and mothers. Ireland leapt into my heart the moment I saw its patchwork quilted landscape beyond the wings of the plane. And when I left, I cried bitter tears for no one who is Irish every leaves Ireland that a piece of their heart does not stay for safe keeping. Ireland, like poetry, is in my blood, you see.

Did I write the perfect poem there amidst all that perfection? Yes and no. Every poem that flowed from my pen at the time was perfect for that moment in which it was created. Poetry is a mood, a shifting ray of sunlight, a note of music. It is a prism through which we each see our world filtered. Perfection exists in a vaccum. Once the air hits it, some chemical reaction occurs and the perfection can burn off like the Irish mysts in the noon day sun.

Every poet has aspired to write the perfect poem. Every poem has aspired to have the elements that will let it go down in literary history as the Once and Perfect Poem. Poet and poem, like dog and owner at a kennel show, try very hard to put their poetic paw forward and take the blue ribbon. But alas, perfection is as fleeting a state as creating a poem. And so it too shifts and casts shadows where there once basked golden sunlight.

So the quest for the perfect poem goes on. In the life of every poet every day of their poetry writing career. The old poet, the young poet, poets of every nation and every occupation, poets laurette and poets we forget - all strive today and will continue to strive tomorrow to weave the perfect pattern of words, form the perfect vessel of rhyme, and compose the perfect symphony of rhythm - into one perfect poem for all time.

And so, I leave you with this...

The perfect poem exists
As does the perfect rose...
Today it lives in my garden
Tomorrow, it lives in yours...

My fellow poets, we raise a glass...to the perfect poem...