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Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Fleeting Radiance (or light beholds Light)

Sunset window
watches days
like minutes
turn years
as
dust
incandescently
glistens from
wooden planks
fossilizing
the future
on the floor.

In writing this poem and trying to discern its meaning I wrote this comment and then the poem that follows. See if it makes sense to you.

"Poets do not control by words, rather, they unleash through them. Whether fury or beauty be unleashed, she knows not at the outset. The poet feels only the passion within words to have intercourse-- one with another. What comes of that takes a lifetime to assess."

poetry
like Revelation
releases meaning
wrapped mysterious
multivalence
crafting intricate worlds
by intimate words
faithing sight.

perhaps the most puzzling thing about poems is we simply don't have time for them, to probe their depth, to ponder their rhythms. in this way, poems are mainly impractical--like people-- aren't they?

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posted by John David Walt | at 6/14/2006 03:22:00 PM

 

7 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

comment on your comment.

funny how the busier our lives get the less relevant the poet and poems become.

5:29 PM EDT  
Blogger Rob Mehner said...

i think poetry and the revelation of God are linked in a way. it's the same kind of things that allow each to happen. silence, reflection, subsequent rather than concurrent interpretation. we inhale the revelation of God and maybe it's the exhale that contains the poem.

11:07 PM EDT  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

JD, I'm curious - do you write the poem or are you the vessel for the poetry itself? I.e. I've never come across a poet who didn't know the meaning to his/her own poetry. P.S. when are we going on a walk? Have you ever seen the twilight burst into the sky at 4am in wilmore? It's a wonderful sight (I haven't been sleeping well).

2:26 PM EDT  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hmmmm....is poetry really ever written, or is it simply emotion and spirit expressed in words....are the words of a poem merely a conduit for something else, something deeper?

6:52 PM EDT  
Blogger Aaron Perry said...

the bit on impracticality reminds me of C.S. Lewis' word on Shasta's father in "A Horse and his Boy." SHasta would ask what was over the northern mountains and his father would answer that it had nothing to do with money, so to forget it. Lewis comment is then that he was a very practical man.

Strange how practicality has become such an obsession in ministry and sermon. Especially strange for sermons.

7:07 PM EDT  
Blogger b.h. swan said...

J.D. I love the new poem. I am reading Wendall Berry everyday.

7:29 PM EDT  
Blogger John David Walt said...

the indomitable Bob Swan. i'm amazed-- citing poets on farmstrong. wow.

8:35 AM EDT  

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