So You Want to Be a Poet

By Lou Jones

What is poetry? This question invites the reader to enter this collection of poems. Within is an array of free-verse offerings covering a range of themes—a would-be poet’s dawdling (“Confessions of a Procrastinator”), the fading of summer (“Vestiges”), the ongoing war in Syria (“I Am Omran”), a mysterious drowning (“The Silent River”), the frustration of mediocre golf skills (“On the Cusp”), the fanciful account of a new home for mankind (“Eden Revisited”), a self-ordained preacher’s quest to save his best friend’s soul, mini episodes on the realities, contrasts, and ironies of life (“The World According to Fedley Tresh and Charley Cain”), impressions at a poetry reading (“Poetry Reading at the Bookstore”), remembering Mary Oliver (“When a Poet Dies”), and dozens of others, hopefully something for everyone. “If There Were No Poetry” concludes the collection and poses the question, Who would we be and how would we be if there were no poetry?

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jun 6, 2019
• ISBN: 9781532076398

Lou Jones

Lou Jones is a Marine Corps veteran and retired Caterpillar Inc. division manager. Lou is a member of the Greensboro Writers’ Guild, Greensboro, Georgia, and the Georgia Poetry Society (contest chairperson, 2009/2012). Lou’s poetry reflects his keen interest in the human condition — our origins, behaviors, relationships, ideologies, scientific inquiry, how we view our world and the universe in which we reside. He previously published two poetry collections, From Microbe to Consciousness and After the Blast, also a novel, And Then the Monarchs Flew Away. Lou and his wife, Toni, live in The Fairways, Savannah Quarters, Pooler, Georgia.

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Copyright © 2019 Lou Jones.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-7638-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-7639-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019906797

iUniverse rev. date:    06/06/2019

For Toni

Proud spirit,

Empathetic heart,

Constant in her capacity to love.

Contents

So You Want to Be a Poet

What is Poetry?

The Primacy of the Household To-do List

Confessions of a Procrastinator

Thoughts on I’m From Poems

The Dark Side of Compulsion

The Art of Putting Things Off

Poetic Anarchy

Remnants

Perpendicular

Comprehension is so Passé

Choices

84th Birthday

The Meter is Running

So You Want to Be a Poet

Fresh Air

November 07, 2018

A Few More Hours, Another Day

Butterfly Morning

Monarch

A Breeze, a Bass, and a Drop-in Simile

Christmas Eve, 2018

Day’s End

Calm

Cycles

A Day on the Slopes (Wintergreen)

Steam

Vestiges

Reprieve?

Of Torrents and Tedium

A Walk on the Beach

Uncle Grover’s Victory Garden (1945)

The Compleat Anglers

Minnows

A Piece of Coal, Two Sand Dollars, and a Jefferson Cup

Somewhere in Time

Once Upon a Time

Once Upon a Time in Autumn

War and Peace

I Am Omran

And Savannah Wept

The Silent River

The Oak on the Hill

Revelation

Reunion

Lighter Fare

The Blood Bank

The Gift

Cavuto Live

Chops and Hops

26.2

Marathons and Cigarettes

Below Freezing in Savannah

Rain and Ray Carver

On the Cusp

Veneer

A Primer on Holding off an Ideologue

Quiet Wisdom

INSIGHT

Wednesday Morning at Bailey’s

Friends (A Soliloquy)

Clip-Clip-Clip

Passage

Eden Revisited

A Re Tha

A New Season

Headin’ Down the Highway

Hardcovers

Strolling Harlem

The World According to FedleyTresh and Charley Cain (Caution)

The Theology of Runnin’ the Hounds

Charley, Fedley, and the DAR

Fedley, Charley, and the Hearse

Charley and Fedley, a Conversation

The Perfidy of Mixing Metaphors

Charley and Fedley, a Coda

Short Takes

Submersion

Playback

The Significance of Lesser Treasures

Rita at Daybreak

Dentist’s Office

Quandary

Hanna

I Wonder

Once Upon a Time a First Love

The Dream

Vows Upon Parting

Knitting

Toni

Poets, Readings, and Workshops

Danger: Keep Back

What’s in a Poem, and Who Cares?

Poet and the Man

Being Galway Kinnell

Light at the End of the Tunnel Vision

Chastened

Poetry Reading at the Bookstore

Lifting the Ban on Numerals in Poetry

Meditations Before Dawn

Pragmatic Capitulation

The Poet

So Much Depends Upon a Wider View

Juxtaposed

Blue is Blue

The Instructor Lectures

The Lighthearted Life of Similes

The Poetry Workshop

Validation

The Road Last Taken

The Last Poem

When a Poet Dies

If There Where No Poetry

If There Were No Poetry

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So You Want to Be a Poet

What is Poetry?

Literary work in which the expression of feelings and ideas

is given intensity by the use of distinctive style and rhythm;

poems collectively or as a genre of literature.

~ Oxford English Dictionary

Dictionary definitions vary widely, some more

elaborate and profound than others. There are

thousands of definitions offered by wordsmiths

across the ages — a Tower of Babel, as many

voices as there are poets.

Definitions fall in a variety of categories:

Succinct — Poetry is language at its most distilled

and most powerful. Rita Dove

Humorous — Poetry: three mismatched shoes at the

entrance of a dark alley. Maxwell Bodenheim

Parody — Poetry is the achievement of the synthesis of

hyacinths and biscuits. Carl Sandburg

Abstract — Poetry is the robe, the royal apparel, in which

truth asserts its divine origin. Henry Ward Beecher

Sublime — The world is full of poetry. The air is living with

its spirit; and the waves dance to the music of its melodies,

and sparkle in its brightness. James Gates Percival

Definitions abound, from the mundane to the imaginative,

the nostalgic to the therapeutic, the wildly esoteric and

pretentious, the how-tos of poetry, the forms and techniques.

Without a universal definition might it be that all poetry,

like all politics, is local, unique to the individual, defined

by mood and moment? Will today’s definition be the same as

tomorrow’s, next week’s, next year’s?

Was poetry to Mary Oliver constant in meaning, the same

as it would have been for Emily Dickinson? Would W.B.Yeats

have defined poetry as Dylan Thomas might have? Did

William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge share a

common notion of poetry’s purpose?

Must poetry be defined? Doesn’t meaning lie within the

individual poet, always? Isn’t it enough to take up pen and pad,

and write, grant each poem the freedom to find its own meaning,

untethered from the world of a thousand amorphous definitions?

The Primacy of the Household To-do List

Today I woke up with the desire to compose

a poem. I have several ideas in my pending file.

I’ll review them and decide on one, for certain.

However, my wife reminds me of several

items undone on the household to-do list.

Says she doesn’t want to push me, but.

I will get to the poem. First I need to cut back the

crepe myrtles. My wife insists I’ve put it off

far too long. It’s time to take on my projects.

I also have to mulch the butterfly garden —

another project requiring my attention,

promised for some time now.

There are the bare spots in the lawn. I have

a bag of seeds to be strewn. To prepare I need

to scarify the soil with my hard-tined rake.

Time has run out on assembling the elevated container

garden. My wife intends to set out herbs in the next

day or two. They’ve been in pots for a week.

The completion of these projects will be satisfying.

It will clear my conscience and please my wife, free

me to work on a poem, unobligated to other tasks.

I’ll shuffle through my poems-in-the-making file.

I’ve also jotted down a few fresh ideas. I have ample

material to work on tomorrow, or maybe tonight.

Confessions of a Procrastinator

I have felt exasperated by my intractable habit of working at certain poems again and again, over long spans of time.

~ Galway Kinnell

It is supposed to rain all day, confining, a time

for inside pursuits. I intend to compose a poem.

The soggy weather could be a catalyst for

breaking my cycle of procrastination. I am intent

on defeating my tendency to put things off.

I’ve come to enjoy poetry in my later years, an avocation

taken up after I retired. But poetry is a challenge,

it doesn’t come easy. I have no innate aptitude

for it. It’s hard work. I strain to draw forth the right

word or phrase. It requires countless iterations

for me to nurture a poem to