By Terry Boyle
Trying to put together a collection of poems is no mean feat. Publishing anything is particularly difficult if you don’t have a good editor. With the help of The Black Spring Publishing company, I managed to compile a good sample of my poems that, for me, captured the essence of my thoughts over the past year.
However, when it comes to poetry, it’s not the most commercial of enterprises. You’re not going to make a fortune from a book of poems, but that’s not the point. Poets write to be heard.
Write in the hopes that what we have to say is shared by others. And, more than anything, a poet wants to create a work that demonstrates their creative imagination.
Having said all of that, most people would still prefer to read a good novel. Poetry demands a lot more from its readers. It’s a genre of literature that appeals to people who love words. It’s only when someone such as Seamus Heaney hits the headlines with a Nobel Prize for literature or Amanda Gorman reads at Biden’s inauguration that suddenly poetry is in vogue again.
Poetry’s hot these days, he said, people, hooked on a lexicon of adjectives
can be very addictive.
Notes of far-flung fancy and hype inspire,
keep them buzzed.
Lights, action, thesaurus!
A smithy for the Populace
Poetry, like music, has a way of transporting us directly into an emotion. Poems can sometimes best express what we cannot find words for.
A whole gamut of experiences can be succinctly communicated in a short poem. For example, when it comes to grief and the loss of a loved one, we source a poem to bring us comfort.
Empty spaces stagnate my weeping hours,
knowingly, they stare blankly back at me,
indifferent to my pain, to my loss.
They surround my every thought with your absence.
– Red Bow Tied
The poet aims to universal their experience in ways that we can identify and relate in the poem. We all remember the early days of COVID-19 and the restrictions placed on our interactions.
We covered our faces in fear
and our hearts opened,
we kept ourselves a grave apart,
six feet to remind us of what we fear.
Connected now by virtual intimacy.
Six Feet Apart
Whatever your culture, you will find the work of poets ingrained into the soul of your tradition. Poets celebrate the best and the worst of us. They dig deep into the roots of who we are to uncover the rich darkness of our longings. One such longing is the need to feel connected to one’s tribe. This longing is such a strong pull for most of us. In my own experience, I’ve always felt a deep relationship with Donegal. Whenever I go back there, I find myself at home.
Drenched in this fine mizzle,
steeps a noble sadness,
and a deep longing to return.
My bog soul houses an ancient race within,
mired in this place I call home,
yearning, like me, to be gathered in.
Spirits of the Past
Often when we think of poems, we tend to think of them as sentimental, and somewhat mawkish. Reduced to its worst, poetry becomes a celebration card, a rhyming gush of sweetness that is like eating a fast food meal that is never satisfying. You keep wanting more.
Poets want to celebrate love in all its facets. If you have been with someone for a long time, it’s easy to allow familiarity to lead to contempt. In this poem, I paint the usual scene of a couple, one of whom is more engaged with their phone than the other.
Glancing demurely, I envy the strong,
affectionate hold you have on your phone,
your eagerness to tap, scroll, swipe,
click your attention to somewhere else.
– Texting Eros
This scenario is a far cry from those heady days when infatuation and desire took priority over everything else. People in love abandon all else in pursuit of the object of their desire. Nothing is more important than the roaring passion of the early flowering of romance.
Under these sheets, love plays amorously,
hidden from a prying sun.
Under these sheets,
The bright splendor of my tears
illuminates in your generous heart…
Under these sheets,
I venerate your soul’s gentle light,
with naked expectancy.
– The Wonder of Renewal
There’s a thin line between love and hate. We are so full of contradictions. Our history has shown us to be capable of great good and destructive urges.
For every good deed we achieve, there are many more occasions when we mistreat others in the worst possible ways. We must not forget the evil of the past so that we don’t repeat it.
Lives short-lived, rich love forever lost;
in Treblinka, the dark soul of the Holocaust.
What’s in a piece of earth?
A bloody field of buried unquiet dreams…
– What’s in a piece of Earth
So, as you can see, I set myself the impossible task of trying to encompass the personal and the collective experiences in such a way that it provides the reader with a chance to contemplate the tragic optimism that enshrines our journey toward evolution or extinction. I believe we choose how we will react in the face of adversity. It’s easy to succumb to the apathy of the time and allow ourselves to be swayed by the more extreme forces that would doom us to our extermination.
I am among the last of the dinosaurs,
among the few to believe that all is not well.
This fragile life is near to becoming extinct.
Our profound naivety will catch us off guard,
And from the skies, our demise will fall upon us
as we sleep,
– Fossilized Giants
I choose to believe that we will come to our senses once we begin to listen to those who encourage us toward peace and justice. Those who lead us towards such standards are often the ones who fall foul of the bully whose fear tactics are designed to undermine democracy. In the face of such malevolence, we have those who continue to speak to us from the past.
Behold the Man to come again,
rasping with indignity,
boldly marching toward Sinai
standing firmly on the mountaintop,
waking the sleepers from their stupor
to behold a world yet to be realized.
– Glass Darkly: Martin Luther King, Jr.
My title for this collection, Angels & Empty Pages, expresses my hope and fear for us as human beings. I am hopeful that our muses, angels, will guide us to greater peace, otherwise, I fear that we will become the empty spaces on our planet, and thus, there will be empty pages.
Angels & Empty Spaces is available at Barnes & Nobel
And on Amazon.
To read more of Terry’s columns, go HERE
Terry Boyle
*Terry is a retired professor now living in Southern California. Originally from Derry, Northern Ireland, in 2004 Terry took up a position at Loyola University, Chicago where he taught courses on Irish and British literature. Apart from teaching, Terry has had several plays produced and has recently been included in The Best New British and Irish Poets 2019 – 2021 (published by The Black Spring Press). He can be reached at: [email protected]
