I don’t claim to have any special knowledge about writing poetry. I studied it in school, including in college, so I’ve had a fair amount of exposure to it, I suppose. It just seems to be a type of writing that comes relatively easily to me and that I enjoy doing. I’ve been “dinking around” with it at least since what they used to call junior high school and now call middle school. But, even though I’ve “wanted to be a writer” for just about as long as I can remember, I’ve not really applied myself to it in a concerted way, except in fits and spurts.
Kalliope
Means "beautiful voice" from Greek καλλος (kallos) "beauty" and οψ (ops) "voice". In Greek mythology she was a goddess of epic poetry and eloquence, one of the nine Muses.
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Your own poetry is always welcome in the comments.
Bongos, berets & turtle neck sweaters optional.
The keyboard is mightier than the sword.
I don’t know if my current phase is just that, or will become a regular and committed part of my life, but this seems like a good time in my sixty-one-year span of living to devote some time to it. I’d mentioned in a previous comment here that I might work on a series of poems about places I lived as I was growing up. I moved around quite a bit, but always within the greater Pacific Northwest, until I left home to attend college, at which point, I added the East Coast and then the Midwest to my repertory of locales that I settled into for awhile. (I guess I could claim the Midwest as part of my childhood places, too, actually, since we periodically spent time in the summer there with relatives on my mother’s side of the family.)
Anyhow, here is a bit of “dinking around” with a poem about childhood places.
Touchet River
You were the boundary
When I would run away.
Sometimes, I'd get angry
Or scared of being in trouble.
Like the time I forgot to go
To my piano lesson.
I took my sister with me, that time.
(I guess I knew she'd make me
Go home eventually.)
If I ever crossed the bridge
Over your cool water
I could never go home again.
I only crossed it once
Looking for an “adopted” pet.
(I adopted lots of wandering critters
Of someone else's, in those days.)
That time didn't count.
I wasn't running away, then.
Simpler times, innocence long lost
Boundary water of youth.
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