“Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during the moment.” Carl Sandburg, 1878-1967 – American poet, biographer, journalist, and editor

Last week I led a writing workshop, using a variety of prompts and exercises to generate writing. The group had fun, worked harder than they expected, and left with several pieces they can expand if they want to.

The last prompt was what I call the 1” square. I gave each person a 4” square of poster board, with a 1” square cut out of the center. They took that ‘window’ –or door–and moved it around a piece of artwork (they’d each chosen one out of a collection of prints) until they found something that caught their eye. For some it was a particular color, for others it was a figure they’d not noticed in earlier exercises using the full view of that same artwork. Because the opening allows only a small piece of the overall image, it’s very much like opening and shutting a door. It’s a glimpse. It’s what Sandburg describes in his quote.

I think this exercise and their results surprised the group more than the other prompts. One of the fun things about these kinds of exercises–at least for most writers–is they lead us to write things we would probably never think to write about otherwise. One woman wrote about the color purple and her granddaughter. She’d never considered writing about her granddaughter before. Another created a whole biography about the person standing …in a doorway. Each participant took what they glimpsed and opened the door wider.

That’s the beauty of poetry. With novels and short stories, most of the story is plotted and laid out for the reader. A poet leaves an image on the page and the reader can take it beyond.

This week’s National Poetry Month selections open and close doors, giving readers a glimpse into different worlds.

In Slow of Study by David E. Poston, David doesn’t shy away from delicate subjects like Southern religion, sin, and school board politics but uses humor and tongue-in-cheek commentary to point out the contradictions that are fibers of all life. He wonders what kind of car Jesus would drive, questions the sinfulness of music as country blues inspire like an altar call, and takes his position in the fight over literature curriculum choices–his perspective as a teacher providing the details of classroom realities. There are bittersweet truths in poems of life, family, and everyday living, but Poston never fully enters the door marked ‘bitter.’

Some doors are literal, as in Len Lawson’s, Negro Asylum for the Lunatic Insane. Len takes us inside the John C. Calhoun Asylum for the Negro Insane, which opened in 1950, and shows us ‘1” squares’ through both sides of the windows in locked doors. In stark language Lawson breathes life into fictional ghosts that might’ve inhabited this institution, if it hadn’t burned under suspicious circumstances in 1973. Through snippets of historical documents and poetry, we’re witnesses to a small universe of racism, mental anguish, and violence that in many ways still mirrors the world outside those doors. Yet amid all that turmoil, Lawson found moments light.

Richard Allen Taylor’s Letters to Karen Carpenter, is divided into four sections, each one titled after a word or phrase associated with the postal service. In Undeliverable, Taylor strikes up a sort of pen pal relationship with the popular 70s singer, though he readily admits it’s one-sided. Richard closes this section with the final poem, I Write to You About Julie, My Wife. The poems in Special Delivery are a tender balance between Julie’s death from acute leukemia and the poet’s promise to survive. We travel around the world in Postcards, through Taylor’s musings on artwork, music, and what’s right in front of him. Change of Address is both literal as Richard leaves the home he shared with Julie, and metaphorical in the places the mind wanders–like contemplating why people get tattoos, and does space really have an end. If there are doors to heaven and beyond, Taylor found them.

And finally, former North Carolina Poet Laureate, Shelby Stephenson’s poems in More are those wooden screen doors on old back porches. They shut with a thwack yet allow that cool mountain breeze in. Peeking through those screens, from either side, the reader sees all the joy, hardship, beauty, blessed simplicity, and gratitude for the rural life. Shelby’s poems make you long for a dog named Cricket “… nine pounds of dog, complete with loyalty not to die without living within sight of me, on the edge of right.”, to sit on that back porch with you. Shelby sees poetry in small images like coffee, possums, and the paper cigar bands that become rings on tiny fingers. He sees poetry in the big things of family, friendship, life and death.

I mentioned in last week’s post my lilacs are blooming, this past week my peonies filled with buds. I may be sitting in the Carolinas, but my nose is firmly set in the Midwest. I hope wherever you are, you’re surrounded by nature’s beauty and all the stuff that makes the world poetic. I hope you have a great week and I’ll see you Monday!

Slow of Study by David Poston

Negro Asylum for the Lunatic Insane by Len Lawson

Letters to Karen Carpenter by Richard Allen Taylor

More by Shelby Stephenson