Writing Poetry

Recently I heard an interview on NPR with a poet who talked about what it took to become one. He likened it to going for soccer practice. You did it every day for years and at some point became a good soccer player. He emphasized the need for knowing the rules of poetry same as you cannot randomly kick a ball and pretend you are playing soccer. He talked about the economy of words and being able to convey a gamut of emotions tightly. The art and craft of writing poetry is about bringing love and effort together. 

His words will stay with me because I do occasionally kick words around much in the manner of a kid kicking a ball in the dirt dreaming they may be one day be Messi or Ronaldo.  Seamus Heaney  is one of the poets I have always idolized and every line in his poems have the qualities of the classic minimal jewelry. Not an extra curve or facet anywhere - only distilled beauty. Read this one again recently to be dazzled by the mastery as always

Polder by Seamus Heaney
Paris Review Issue no. 75 (Spring 1979)

After the outburst and the terrible squalls
I hooped you with my arms

and remembered that what could be contained
inside this caliper embrace

the Dutch called bosom; and fathom
what the extended arms took in.

I have reclaimed my polder,
all its salty grass and mud-slick banks;

under fathoms of air, like an old willow
I stir a little on my creel of roots.