Somewhere, someone — an author, or maybe a songwriter — challenged his readers or his students (or maybe himself?) to write a 6-line rhyming poem every day. I liked the sound of this challenge. This is very different from the kind of writing I normally do. Mostly I brain dump the thoughts in my head into notebooks, I type all day at work, I message friends and coworkers, I blog. I do not rhyme, I do not (knowingly) pay attention to rhythm, I do not write verse.

Recently, our son has gotten me interested in poetry. He’s double majoring in Computer Science and English in college. Whenever I talk to him, I want to know how his English classes are going, who he’s reading, what he likes, who I should read, too. He loves T.S. Eliot, especially “The Waste Land,” so I bought a small volume of Eliot poems that I pick up every few days to read and re-read, to try to understand what’s happening. I usually do not understand.

I do understand Mary Oliver’s poetry. It is simple. It is beautiful. It blows my mind. When I read it, I shake my head in wonder. How does she do this? How does she distill the essence of life into these elegant, uncomplicated verses? Into this one line? If you have not read Mary Oliver, and you like beauty and have an interest in the evocative power of words, I recommend her. “The Summer Day” ends with a line you might recognize. “Invitation” is one of my favorites. As a morning-lover, I love her Thousand Mornings collection.

At our local bookstore, when I asked the shopkeeper if they had a writing section, and she smiled apologetically and said, “Well, yes, but there’s not usually much there,” I may have gasped and made a small clap with my hands when I saw Mary Oliver’s name on the shelf. There sat a used copy of The Poetry Handbook. I did not know this book, but I did not need to. The combination of “Mary Oliver” and “writing section” was enough for me. I bought it and stuck my nose in it even as I pushed the door open with my shoulder (because my hands held the book) and walked down the sidewalk.

From this book I’ve learned about sound, meter, rhyming patterns, and diction (word choice). Each morning for a week, I read from this book, read the example poems, then picked up Eliot again. I couldn’t get his rhythm, so I looked on Spotify if I could find anyone reading his poems. And what do you know – I found Eliot himself reading his poems. I listened to him read “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and “Portrait of a Lady,” and now when I read the poems, I hear his lovely voice, and the soothing rhythm.

At the end of the week, after I’d finished The Poetry Handbook, my husband and I went to see the saxophonist Sarah Hanahan, and as we listened, I thought, Music and poetry are the same! They are math and they are language — they are sound, meter, pattern, and diction — and my god humans are creative and amazing and beautiful!

To add some novelty to my own writing practice, and to break me out of creative ruts, I’ve been writing 6-line rhyming poems every day for the past week or so. They’re terrible, truly. But I do have a couple of fun ones that make me laugh.

Fuck it

At some point
I’ll smoke a joint
And quit worrying about creating.

Soon
There will come a date
I’ll say fuck it, and I’ll create.

Kitty

Rattly purr
Shedding fur
You look up to my face.

Rest on my belly
You’re kind of smelly
Yet you wriggle into my heart space.