This week someone hinted that I needed to write more in the poetic form. “Find your voice,” they suggested. Poetry? Me? Yipes! I thought about it and concluded that I am not a poet and am sure I have no idea how to think like a poet, or write like one!
Sure, I read poetry and like a lot of it. There are times that I even have the urge to express in poet mode. If you like music, I guess you are a ‘closet poet.’ I have read that ‘a poet is somebody who feels deeply, and expresses those feelings through words.’ Sounds simple, yet that isn’t very easy to do, once one sits down with paper and pen.
The words that come out on my page don’t always look like they are expressing my feelings.
I think that the problem is in defining the word ‘feeling.’ Or is it in defining ‘voice’?
Have you ever sat in a conversation and noticed why you were starting to mentally take yourself away from that conversation? Did it seem that the conversation was mostly one of opinion (lack of true voice) and ‘talking about’ stuff rather than expressing genuine feelings?
Here’s a funny thing about that. I have tried to express my feelings about an issue and my listener then disagreed with me. He disagreed with my feelings! Like they were an opinion about which he was disagreeing. I had to think about that. You know, maybe we all ‘talk about’ issues and think we are expressing feelings about them. Perhaps our listeners think it is all a debate. Perhaps.
e.e.cummings said, “A lot of people think or believe or know they feel – but that’s thinking or believing or knowing; not feeling. And poetry is feeling – not knowing or believing or thinking.”
The other day I was sitting in a restaurant quietly observing the couple in the next booth. They were speaking to each other in a language that I did not understand, but there was an abundance of feeling present. It was easy to just let my own body react to the highs and lows of their conversation. Maybe they were speaking of their love, or maybe they just found the house of their dreams, or maybe he or she got a good doctor’s report. I’ll never know. But I do know that, while secretly eavesdropping, I was very engaged in their chat.
Years ago, I spent a month in Russia with a cross-cultural consulting group. I became friends with some wonderful folks and on the eve of my departure for home, I recorded a personal acknowledgment from a fellow who spoke no English (I declined to use a translator at the time and preferred to just be present and allow him to ‘voice’ his thoughts). He spoke with heartfelt emotion, and his wife and children seemed to amplify his words.
When he was finished, my translator said, “You have a very good friend there. Should I translate what he said for you?”
I thought about it for a moment and then said, “I got what he was saying and that’s enough.”
Every once in a while I listen to that tape, still not knowing the literal meaning of the acknowledgment, but somehow knowing that there is friendship and community present. I can feel it and that is what really matters.
Oh, and I can even create the sense that he was speaking in poetry. How? Because I heard ‘voice’ and ‘feelings’ in his words.
Rich