Reply to the Question: "How can You Become a Poet?" -- Eve Merriam

(Poem #428) Reply to the Question: "How can You Become a Poet?" take the leaf of a tree trace its exact shape the outside edges and inner lines memorize the way it is fastened to the twig (and how the twig arches from the branch) how it springs forth in April how it is panoplied in July by late August crumple it in your hand so that you smell its end-of-summer sadness chew its woody stem listen to its autumn rattle watch it as it atomizes in the November air then in winter when there is no leaf left invent one -- Eve Merriam

As I've remarked before, poets as a class are inordinately fond of
commenting on the nature of poetry itself, and doing it in verse. I like
this trend for several reasons - for one, I'm a big fan of self-reference in
all its myriad incarnations; for another, it bespeaks a sense of play that I
feel can only enhance a poet's work. And not least of all, because poetry
itself *is* a wonderfully poetic topic, and that some truly beautiful poems
have been written on it.

I particularly like today's poem because it sums up a number of my own
feelings about poetry (and, for that matter, about Art in general), and far
better than I could have. Merriam conjures up a beautiful evocation of the
creative process, seamlessly interspersed with a verse picture of a leaf,
and culminating in an unexpected, but oh-so-satisfyingly *right* conclusion.

The form is well-chosen too - the shortage of capitalisation, far from
obtruding itself on the reader's notice, stays in the background, lending
the poem an air of quietness, while the lack of punctuation emphasises the
smoothly evolving flow of the images. In Merriam's own words, "a good poem
contains both meaning and music", and today's certainly fits both criteria.

Biography:

  Eve Merriam is a poet, playwright, director, and lecturer. Born in
  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1916, she attended Cornell University,
  University of Pennsylvania, University of Wisconsin, Columbia University,
  and has has taught and lectured at many other institutions. Her first
  book, Family Circle (1946), was selected for the Yale Series of Younger
  Poets by Archibald MacLeish. In addition to her adult poetry, she has also
  written picture books and a number of books of poetry for children,
  including There is No Rhyme for Silver (1964), It Doesn't Always Have to
  Rhyme (1964), The Inner City Mother Goose (1969), Catch a Little Rhyme
  (1966), Finding a Poem (1970), Out Loud (1973), and Rainbow Writing
  (1976). The controversial Inner City Mother Goose, which Merriam once
  referred to as "just about the most banned book in the country," was the
  basis for a 1971 Broadway musical, Inner City, and a second musical
  production, Street Dreams (1982), which was performed in San Francisco,
  Chicago and New York City. In 1981, she was named the winner of the NCTE
  Award for Ex.

        -- [broken link] http://www.poets.org/lit/poet/emerriam.htm

Links:

A nice list of metapoems (from where I got today's) can be found at
http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/poetry/index.html

We've also run several on minstrels - see, in particular, the week starting
with poem #186

- martin