Scott Owens’ poem Piece of Cake appeared in March 2011 as part of Contributor Series 8: Feast and Famine. It was delicious and so is this.
To Be in Poetry
By Scott Owens
There is something about the way
a poem sits on a page surrounded
by so much white space, the stanzas boldly
declaring their independence, the lines,
rarely reaching the margin, yet,
taking themselves so seriously,
believing they deserve to be broken,
set apart, spoken in single,
emphatic expulsions of breath, the words
carefully chosen for sound, denotation,
connotation, association, intentionally placed,
measured, juxtaposed, the crisp
black curls and lines of letters
staunchly denying the oppression of the void,
crush of prose, even a title
given to somewhere between 5 words,
the shortest decent poem I’ve ever
read, and a couple hundred,
sometimes even a byline for what
might only be a single sentence
that makes me think there might be hope
for us all if we could learn to be
like poems, vital, connected, leaning
into the moment a bit harder.
What a wonderful poem using poetry as a metaphor. I love the last four lines.