Reflections on serious poetry

WHAT IS POETRY?

You ask me what is poetry...

Generally, the art of writing
artistically, creatively, with
inspiration, and imagination;
collectively, creations of
beauty, sound, and sense,
lyrical, metrical, dramatic--
all suffering label by critic:
traditional, free verse, blank
verse, sonnet, sestet, quatrain ...

But, you ask again,
what of the soul of it?
And what's it like to be
a poet, creating from the
burning coal deep within--
the baring, contention, the
wrestling with convention?

Poetry is living intently,
trying to lasso truth,
paint the wind, describe the
churning innards of an angry sea.
It's picturing portions of life
distilled, exposing locked-up
treasure, offering pleasure by
blood-letting, relieving pain:
elevating fettered souls by
cutting through the ordinary,
exposing the raw mundane.

It's moving hearts toward finite
finish-- truth, love, and beauty,
in language polished to nth degree.

Poetry is ...a searching,a
reaching for the mind of God
--the blind learning to be.