POETRY PART 1 – “STRENGTH”
As best as I can recall, I started writing poetry in the late 70’s, certainly around 1980. In college at the University of Miami, while studying Creative Writing and Film-making, I dabbled in what can only be described as clichés and imitations. My desire was there; my knowledge of the craft was sorely lacking. But, hey, that’s why you go to college.
After a failed marriage, I roamed, geographically and emotionally. I acquired through dubious means (not to be discussed) The Harper Anthology of Poetry, edited by John Frederick Nims. It covered a broad selection of British and American poetry from 1200 through the publication date of 1981. Entries included brief biographies of the poets, adequate footnotes, and a thoroughly amazing note section in the end on prosody.
I read. I studied. I learned. And I experimented. Obviously, there were sonnets. Not just Shakespearean sonnets but Spenserian sonnets and Petrarchan sonnets. Villanelles, couplets, meter, long and short feet, Tanka, Haiku, Modernism, Post-modernism — you name it. I was trying to fill an emotional void with the capacity to express myself, my depression, my feelings of loss and of being lost.
My peak for writing poetry was between 1990 and 1994. I was living in Boston and completely surrounded with the widest variety of artistic types. It was a veritable cornucopia of people and ideals and thoughts and temperaments. I navigated toward like-minded souls and read and talked and wrote and critiqued and edited. My day job was a means of paying rent, buying a few groceries, and being able to afford paper and typewriter ribbon.
Naturally, my earliest efforts were derivative. You read Shakespeare, you write a sonnet. Read Eliot and become esoteric and obscure. However, I came across a piece by Robinson Jeffers entitled “Nova” and was taken by its sense of acceptance of the mortality of the world. I was barely 30 but highly impressed by the content. Today, at 60, it is even more meaningful.
My homage was entitled “Strength.” Whereas it does not approach the greatness of the Jeffers piece, I am proud of it and its own statement. I feel it stands up 30 years later.
STRENGTH
The girth of Goliath was his strength.
A brute beast, six cubits and a span, a champion
of his people; not actually willing
to give his life for a cause so much as
believing there was no chance to die.
But one sling, one stone, one great faith,
and there was thunder as the great body
came crashing down.
I used to believe that knowledge and wisdom were strength,
was bred to believe that, instilled by
the volumes of books even in the nursery.
And to that end I studied immaculately.
Yet whatever knowledge and wisdom I may now possess
is used for this day, one day only,
this time, the only time I know of.
For I am told of the Great Uncertainty of things,
explained by scientists in elaborate detail
of the impermanence even of the sun.
The great explosion that brought all this into being
may come around again to end it finally;
by ourselves or by the eventuality of Nature,
the impenetrable fuse will be lit.
At that time, the seas and oceans will dry up completely,
the forests turn to deserts, the cities rust
and erode until they are dust once again.
Long before then, however, the arrogant creature that we
have become will fade like a passing thought,
simply slip away into the void, never realizing
that the ending was beginning.
And the towers and monuments and words that we have created
will be a Nothing that No One will remember.
This is the only real knowledge that I have gained.
And it is my strength.
