Writing a Poem Is Heroic
Just as every poem is a hero’s journey, every moment of your life is so much the same. No matter how inconsequential it may seem, a poem requires great attention and bravery and humility to come into being. Like the hero, it must leave home, its safe and familiar mooring, to embark on a quest of discovery. Like the hero, the poem must face hardship, battle daunting foes both real and imagined, and like the hero, the poem must come home, redefining home and self in the process.
So you enact the very same journey in your life’s course, and this is why poems are woven into the cells of your heart, brain, and body. Coming into woman-or-manhood, you take your leave, you go adventuring, and you return home with the news of all that you learned along the way.
That is the poem at completion, and that is your perfect life, lived and savored and, as that marvelous mystic Shakespeare put it, rounded with a sleep.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by molly campbell and Nancy Duci Denofio, Maureen Doallas. Maureen Doallas said: "Writing a Poem Is Heroic", by Robert McDowell at @ThreeIntentions : http://ht.ly/1EdRh [...]
Thanks for this kindness, Maureen!