Walking With Danger

 

   Can you make a living writing poetry? According to the Internet you can. Poetry has had its ups and downs, but it's cool again. You can become an Instapoet on Instagram. Here are four  steps for making real money.

1. Find a sponsor.

2. Add affiliate links to your poetry posts.

3. Sell products through your poetry: e.g., books of your poetry, branded mugs, bags, and shirts.

4. Hang around a bar and ask patrons as they leave if they'd like a poem for the road.

  I recently helped out a poet who was using this fourth method. Teresa and I had just had lunch at Brigid's Cross Irish Pub in Bemidji. As we were eating, I noticed a young man hanging around the bar. He left and came back a couple of times and I thought he might be delivering food around the area. But no, he was a poet. 

  This fellow stopped us when we on the street headed to our car and asked if we'd like to buy a poem. We could see several sheets of paper in a ziplock bag he was carrying. He said he was living in the local shelter. We were picking someone up at the airport just then and were in a hurry. Teresa gave me the high sign and I said, ok gimme a poem and passed him some cash. I regretted being so abrupt, but these transactions embarrass me.

  I tried reading the poem later but the poet, Antonio Mims by name, has a unique style. His penmanship, though neat, is as loopy as Sanskrit. The big question about a poem is, is it any good. If I like a poem, it's good. Just because a poem is difficult doesn't make it bad. An English teacher told me the value of a poem depends on what it's saying. It's up to the reader to make an effort.

And here's Antonio's poem transcribed for easier study.

Walking With Danger

stained by a colorless 

spirit - reliving a longing 

that left love a wound

harvesting light - eternal war

paths refusing to be 

buried - writing airwaves

to combat flooded pains

born to collide hearts

into minds - nights rehearsing

sermons - sermons rehearsing

prophecy - sun sent time

lapses - holding horizons in

their reflections - stones

training tears to embrace

passion - uplifting hopes of excellence -

Heaven defending its essence - fire

becomes a canvas for bravery - where

poetry cradles magic  - free and blessed

  I asked my two favorite retired English teachers to critique Antonio's poem.

  Catherine Stenzel, who writes for the Wannaskan Almanac as Jack Pine Savage, marked the poem with comments using a green pen as she did back at Marshfield, WI High School. Catherine said the poem opens with a great image, and that the ache of longing is palpable. Further on, "writing airwaves" and "combat flooded pains" are two more great images. And "stones training tears to embrace" is outstanding and poignant. "...sermons rehearsing prophecy" is a good paradox. You can't rehearse the future, Catherine notes.

 Where Antonio goes astray in Catherine's view is that his line breaks interfere with the poem's flow. Some of the good images clash with each other leading to a confused picture. She says "hearts into minds" is clichéd, "uplifting hopes of excellence" and "free and blessed" at the end are both weak. She would cut the last three words. Catherine found the meter of the poem intriguing and recommends strengthening some of the words.

 Ginny Graham, teapoetry on the Wannaskan Almanac, says she also would mark up a student's poem when she taught at an alternative high school in Arlington County, Virginia. Ginny wanted to do a Zoom get-together to talk about the poem. Spouses Jim and Teresa sat in and gave feedback.  Ginny said Antonio is definitely a poet, able to crystallize feelings in words. The poem gives insight into painful experience.

  It was interesting to see how Ginny's comments echoed Catherine's: great images, but they add up to a confused image for the reader. The poem needs a thread to tie the images together. Ginny said she would have loved to have Antonio in her creative writing class. Ginny always started a critique of a student's poem with profuse praise, then would start the coaching before the blushes faded. She would suggest that Antonio replace the gerunds, the -ing words, with stronger words. The important thing is that the poem is heartfelt. A little training can only improve it. As the French poet Valéry said, a poem is never finished, only abandoned.

   Many thanks to our analysts, Catherine and Ginny. And to my readers, next time you're in Bemidji, stop in at Brigid's Cross and have a Guinness in an Antonio Mims mug.