Poetry is play! The day it no longer is is the day you're gone to stay. Enough poeting around; time to get to the point! Oh wait! That was the point. Poetry is play!
I'd say the rest in jest but I presume you think it's time I get serious so I will. My point in all of this is that poetry is a fantastic game to me. It is a sport I took up with the intent of better understanding myself and the world around me. I was a refugee from the seriousness of Bay Street and poetry took me by hand inside its borders. I needed an outlet to play and rediscover a sense of levity about life which in due time I came to find in rhyme. I embarked on this theater of the mind with one goal and came to find quite a bit more. I sought an alternate spice route to India and found America instead. I may be exaggerating somewhat but you get my point.
My malleable mind took to writing poems like a drunkard to drink as I learned a new way to think. As the days passed, my eyes learned to see in new ways. What I mean is that I've learned in these five years or so to see relationships where they apparently don't exist. How does a crime scene serve as a metaphor for romantic heartbreak? What does a little known Austrian artist have to do with David Bowie and James Dean? Since when do knots have anything to do with an anxious human mind? Looking back, I've come to understand that mathematics had already trained me to find hidden relationships and that poetry was simply a different way of unearthing hidden truths. The poetic mind is a detective. The poetic mind is a mathematician.
Speaking of mathematics, poetry is quasi-mathematical in other ways. It deals in meters and symmetries. Skillfully crafted poems can seem almost geometric in their structure and beauty. It becomes even more apparent when they're set to music; think Leonard Cohen's Famous Blue Raincoat. Poetry is also a mix of real and imaginary. You could call it complex. And it is a way of drawing the abstract, as mathematicians so often do.
Extending on this last idea, let me ask, how do you draw feelings? What color is depression, anxiety, melancholy? Does happiness have eyes to see and ears to hear? What shading gives life to a feeling of void, to anhedonia? What flavor are the lips of the girl you daydream about daily? Different types of artists answer such questions differently. The poet's answer is to play the great game with words to paint the required images in stains of black and white, red and white, blue and yellow, depending on what you're writing on and with. The poetic mind is an artist.
Some would argue that poetry lacks a sense of absolute truth and that the game of poetry is a bridge to nowhere, merely serving as an indulgence for adults who wish to relive their childhoods through wordplay. But this is the absolute truth of poetry, its fundamental theorem. We write poems to dream a little, to catch a star, to feel alive. We do care about a strong end product and take it seriously, perhaps a bit too much at times. Ultimately though, we wish to push the boundaries and this is fun for the same reasons that our misdeeds of infancy were. The poetic mind is a child.
The poetic game is a game of words. But sometimes, poetry becomes something more. There are times where feelings and ideas transcend words. The "nah, nah, nah" with the booming snare hits of Simon and Garfunkel's The Boxer conveys more poetic power in the song than a normal chorus ever could. The insistent "I know" from Bill Withers in "Ain't No Sunshine" is also a good example. Sometimes, words really are not enough and more is needed. Sometimes, addition happens by subtraction. The poet (or songwriter for that matter) has to know how to capture a loss for words as well as he captures the right words. The poetic mind is also silence or incoherence in the right spots.
The game of poetry is a supremely complex, intricate and ambiguous game, often without clear winners and losers. The good news is that the game of poetry is not pay to play. It is open to all. It may begin with the sense of helplessness that comes from lacking skill, direction and practice, as it did for me, but the goal is play. Our adult minds long for the quasi-perfect freedom of childhood and it can be found through poetry. It should be undertaken with a sense of adventure though, that is without the self-censorship that comes with trying to fit into a mold or be accepted. Play for the sake of playing. Make your own paths by walking them. By all means learn from the masters but dare to be different. Who cares if they like it or get it. Poetry isn't politics. Poetry is play!
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