Growing up I had this love/hate relationship with poetry. I wanted to like it, and I tried to read it many times, but most times it felt as if I was reading a foreign language…a bunch of words jumbled together in all the wrong order with no punctuations. It might as well have been one of those languages that is written right to left.

It was brutal at times. I felt stupid at times. I wanted to experience poetry the way other people had experienced, but it never worked out. Almost every time I tried it was usually frustrating, and almost always exhausting. So, I would give up for a while. But it would never fail, something would strike up a thought, or pique my interest in poetry again, and so, like a rider thrown off a horse, I would dust myself off, and get back in the saddle…only to be thrown again!

We Must Learn To Listen

“Poets live the lives all of us live with one big difference. They have the power – the power of the word – to create a world of thoughts and emotions others can share. We only have to learn to listen.” ~ Bill Moyers

Come to find out, I had no idea how to listen! Not just to poetry, but to people, to the universe…to God. Now, my poetry tends to flow from a place of listening to God stir my inner life in order to unearth feelings and emotions about situations that I didn’t realize was affecting me.

That’s not always the case, though. Many times, God enourages me to write poetry when he needs to reveal something to me. It’s usually something I am not taking the time to unearth on my own. Or maybe I don’t want to unearth it. But because he births a poem, it’s like he’s coming around to the side door, the one left unprotected for easy entry. Once the poem is down on paper, I’m usually surprised by what I read. It’s usually because I would not have put those words to the emotions running rampant through my body.

That’s why I really like poetry, especially writing it. I can count on it to reveal things inside of me that I can sometimes not get to any other way.

Now, I still have problems reading poetry at times. I still don’t understand all of it, but I’m learning to let that go and not get frustrated in the process. The more I read, the more I enjoy, and the more I write. What’s been your experience with poetry? I’d love to hear from you.