Alchemy of Poetry

I don't know how it happens, but it does. When poets write (or read) in the same room, it's amazing how certain themes and strains wind their way through lines of poetry without purposeful intent. It's magic.

In class the other day, I assigned an e.e. cummings poem as inspiration to focus on form. We poets put our heads down to write. I write along with my students. Great opportunity to get some of my own poems written. Imagine my astonishment when circling the room, I leaned over one student's computer to see the same melancholy tone I had written in my own poem. I raced over to my computer to print. We read our poems and the class was blown away. How had this young poet and I had captured the same feelings... even using some of the same words to write our poems? We hadn't talked about it. And... what's even more weird? Our melancholy poems were radically different than the rest of the class's Spring-themed poems of hope, happiness and sunshine. We wrote about regret, shame, sadness. Our words were just so aligned. The feeling in-tune.

Last night, The Teen Howl Poetry rocked the mic. Again... without pre-planning, themes began to emerge. These poets don't even attend the same schools or even live in the same counties, yet... fireflies, carnivals, Kentucky culture, angst, magic linked the individual poems into one collective collage. Some nights, it's "ripping the Band-Aids off" nights. Last night was surreal. Like floating in a Miro painting. How does that happen?

I like to teach what I call "paired poetry". Today, I will practice it with my students. Two students are paired. Without discussion, the first poet writes a line and then folds the page over. The second poet writes a line. They go back and forth until each has written ten lines. Then... the magic. They open the poem to find one long poem collectively written and inevitably... it works. Somehow... some way... the poems become linked. Words are repeated. Ideas are echoed. How does that work?

The alchemy of poetry. The divine Muse that hovers over our shoulders and whispers into our ears. The magic of words.