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Newest Poems

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Poetry Collection

I often hear people say they don’t understand poetry, so they don’t read it.

Poetry, said Leonardo da Vinci, is painting that is felt rather than seen. Poems hold a life of their own, for as a poem is coming to life it often becomes something outside of the poet’s control. And while speaking one thing to one person, it often speaks something different to another.

I read once that the difference between poetry and prose is in the journey. Prose is a train journey from one destination to another, marked by visible tracks and road signs. It’s a journey comfortably made in plush seats and climate-controlled cars, and the countryside is seen from behind big windows. But poetry, on the other hand, is a journey on foot, on roads both marked and unmarked, and out in the elements. It’s a much slower journey, but you can see and feel and smell the countryside like you can’t from the train window. It’s a journey that will feel different for one person than for another; they will notice completely different things. A journey on foot can take you places you hadn’t planned, and you may or may not arrive at your destination. But it may just be a place you wouldn’t have wanted to miss.

This is poetry.

What is deep, as love is deep,
I’ll have deeply.
What is good, as love is good,
I’ll have well.
Then if time and space
have any purpose,
I shall belong to it.
If not, if all is a pretty fiction
to distract the cherubim and seraphim
who so continually do cry,
the least I can do
is to fill the curled shell of the world
with human deep-sea sound,
and hold it to the ear of God,
until he has appetite
to taste our salt sorrow on his lips.

– Christopher Fry, The Lady’s Not For Burning