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The Science of Poetry

Rochelle Holt


Study hard. Poetry is a science
not an art. -- Harriet Monroe
��(on an early rejection often recalled)

After the bitter
comes specific taste
lkike��craft of carpentry--
building a hammock
or porch-glider
ad of paying a dime
to ride a stranger’s pony.
All writing that lasts
is like that maybe:
��the truth in lye soap;
��flag-red stripe
��revolving barber pole;
��a roller-skate key;
��saw/dust shuffling
�� on butchershop floor.

It’s facts that matter
not mere statistics specifically;
although numbers count
��in jumping double-dutch,
��hopscotch on cracked cement,
��frozen statues
��in prairie,
��or hide ’n seek
��in grandpa’s shed
behind the garden
��near gangway
and a train
as we wave hello
��to good-bye caboose
��or sonductorman in front,
our engines revving fast
��past the tavern and pain.

Poems fall
��like rain in a barrel,
are delivered in quarts
��like glass milk bottles
��on back porch
as child os born again
��pressing leaves flat
��in brown scrapbook
��or trading blue marble
��for black rusty bell
found in cinderalley
��on the way
��to selling empty Coke
��two bottles for one penny candy
��or three cent wax red lips.
That’s what matters
about magnifying
��tissuethinwings
��of orange butterfly
��or Mississippi gold bug
on rose petal
��or blade of dewey grass.
Not the search
��for beauty in reason
but the struggle
��to recall:
��mist on toes
��sun on eyes
��snow on nose
��and the sigh
of a mood at midnight
when the mind is awake
only in the dream.





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