Poetry Talk

Welcome to my Poet Lady Chat Room. I would like to invite you to click on the chat box and type in a question, a suggestion, submit a poem, in other words – “chat with me.” I may, if you submit a poem, decide to feature it in my Poem of the Week section or, we may simply exchange ideas and suggestions about your poem.

This is a place to “talk” poetry with someone who has loved it all her life. I have a true passion for the possibilities of poetry and would love to hear your thoughts and/or read your poem. I will be happy to offer my reaction to your work and, based on over 40 years of teaching poetry, organizing, and conducting poetry workshops, working as a book review editor for an international poetry magazine, authoring five books of poetry and two textbooks on teaching poetry, send along my thoughts on ways to make your poem stronger and more impactful.

If you’re on my site, you have a connection to poetry. Feel free to connect with me – right here -right now, by typing your message into the “chat box” and clicking send. I’m waiting…

 

Your friend in poetry, Susan

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The theology of dust (1 reply)

Comfort
2 weeks ago
Comfort 2 weeks ago

I watch the sun spill itself thin through a cracked celling,

Dust... a cathedral of forgotten memories

dances with the desperate reminder

that even ruins remember light.

The air hums with small eternities,

each particle rehearsing how to glow.

I reach my hand into the beam,

and it fits,perfectly,like time forgave me.

Funny how the light never asks who built the cracks,

it just arrives, certain it belongs.

 

I wonder if God ever sneezed when He made us.

If the first man was an accident of breath,

a handful of earth flung too hard toward eternity.

Every temple is dust pretending to be order.

The air is a slow confession of beginnings,

each mote a sermon on impermanence.

Even silence sheds,

every stillness has a shimmer if you look long enough.

 

And yet, nothing keeps.

Even light forgets the faces it touches.

Dust gathers where faith once stood,

patient, unashamed, unending.

Perhaps holiness is just what lingers

after everything else

stops trying to be seen.

 

Susan Katz
2 weeks ago
Susan Katz 2 weeks ago

Another powerful, intensely written poem.  Again, you have some outstanding lines - images and a fine, sustaining rhythm that keeps you moving effortlessly through the poem.  There are moments in the poem when I think less would have been more - for example:

The air is a slow confession of beginnings, (Lovely)

each mote a sermon on impermanence. (wonderful word choices)

Even silence sheds,

every stillness has a shimmer if you look long enough.  (don't know if you need "if you look long enough.")

Poetry is "the fewest possible words, in the best possible order."  Your poems are, unquestionably, poetry.  But poetry is a living thing and is always open to ways to improve itself.

Again, thank you for trusting me with your poems - and for giving me such a powerful "punch" of poetry as I head off into the kitchen to do some holiday baking.

Your friend in poetry,

Susan

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