Profession: Poet is a new monthly blog feature exploring craft and identity in poetry by Hanoch Guy, who writes poems in both English and Hebrew.
“Without poetry, we lose our way.”
— Joy Harjo, U.S. Poet Laureate & Academy of American Poets Chancellor
Just imagine:
You get up in the morning. An excellent poem pops into your head. You send it to a magazine and it is accepted the next day. Within a week, it is published. You have a wondrous and generous muse, and she constantly inspires you with new poems.
You may be scratching your head, asking, what are you talking about?
We wish it was that simple.
Let me suggest ways that may open the doors of poetry and insight for you, for the times when you are feeling stuck or uninspired.
Here are some practices for cultivating and inviting profound poems.
Widen your awareness of everything around you and inside of you.
We absorb and experience the world through our senses, feelings, and thoughts.
Let the sensations and vibrations wash over you. The process of writing is complex, and many times, the gateways of the senses are efficient and immediate.
Open to your five senses and more.
There is a multitude of ways to write poems. Consider:
Sight: nature, colors, shapes, movement
Sounds: background, outside and inside, the sounds of your breath, of humming
Tastes
Touch, texture
Smell
Feel
Here is an example of the senses and experience of sensations in poetry:
your forehead crowned
with black gold
– Avraham Halfi (translated from the Hebrew)
And, here are some lines inspired by Halfi’s poem:
The forest, a symphony of yellow-brown leaves.
Purple, red, green patches.
*
Your tongue salty sweet.
*
Soft intimate wind
surrounds you.
*
Your skin burns my hand, lips.
Fingers dance across forehead.
*
Tingling.
Trunk knocks me down.
Triangle within circles, within my eyes’ whites.
*
If you want to immerse yourself in sensual poetry, try these:
Here’s a challenge:
Find a poem that offers the most of the experience of the five senses.
More paths to poetry next month!
Hanoch Guy Ph.D, Ed.D spent his childhood and youth in Israel. He is a bilingual poet in Hebrew and English. Hanoch has taught Jewish Hebrew literature at Temple University and poetry and mentoring at the Muse House Center. He won awards in the Mad Poets Society, Phila Poets, Poetry Super Highway and first prize in the Better than Starbucks haiku contest. His book, Terra Treblinka, is a finalist in the North Book Contest. Hanoch published poems in England, Wales, Israel, the U.S., and Greece. He is the author of nine poetry collections in English and one Hebrew book.