The Color of Saying

Poet's Notes

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Notes and Quotes:

"Between the lines thoughts were felt, beyond the words. In a way words could never be simply read.”
“Good writing is the art of making words mean more than they say.”

“A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.”
- W.H. Auden, The Complete Works of W.H. Auden: Prose, Volume II: 1939-1948

“words are like nets - we hope they'll cover what we mean, but we know they can't possibly hold that much joy, or grief, or wonder.”
- Jodi Picoult, Change of Heart

“A poet should be so crafty with words that he is envied even for his pains.”
- Criss Jami, Killosophy

“I want to see the thirst inside the syllables
I want to touch the fire in the sound:
I want to feel the darkness of the cry.
I want words as rough as virgin rocks.”
- Pablo Neruda

“Surely it is an odd way to spend your life - sitting alone in a room with a pen in your hand, hour after hour, day after day, year after year, struggling to put words on pieces of paper in order to give birth to what does not exist, except in your head. Why on earth would anyone want to do such a thing? The only answer I have ever been able to come up with is: because you have to, because you have no choice.”
- Paul Auster

“When you are writing laws you are testing words to find their utmost power. Like spells, they have to make things happen in the real world, and like spells, they only work if people believe in them.”
- Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“Poetry is prose bewitched, a music made of visual thoughts, the sound of an idea.”
- Mina Loy, The Lost Lunar Baedeker: Poems of Mina Loy

“When I feel the beauty in words, I am sensing the logic of heart.”
- Toba Beta

“Whatever you get out of poetry - take it. take it. take it.
Words are better off felt than understood.”
- Sanober Khan

“Words are memes that can be pronounced.”
- Daniel C. Dennett

“To write does not mean to convert the real into words but to make the power of the word real.”
- Augusto Roa Bastos, I, the Supreme

Listen to poem:

The wordsmith toils over hot metal fonts in wellsprings
Struggling like a blacksmith to hone and shape 
    thoughts and images into typeface words and poems.
To conjure up meanings from thoughts twisted, prodded,
    cajoled and prised to render mindful hot gems of expression.
Squeezing letters from tubes onto a pallet,
    the smithy shovels the alphabet mix into blobs of words and
    babbles with peaks, on bench.
Words of many colors gleaned and arrayed for careful collation.

Shuffling through the verbal menagerie,
    words are carefully selected 
    for their sound, voice, look and meaning.
Memorable and meaningful words, 
    that prompt feelings way beyond what the words just say,
Words that bind the fabric of emotional phrases in layer on layer, 
    and in the honey, binding the words together,
Words provoking deep blue feeling 
    when words read between the lines,
Words that reach out well beyond the intended, 
    to the unintended feelings and emotions in readers.
Word plays, games and devices crafted 
    to perfection by wordsmith magicians.

For the wordsmith loves words 
    with sheer, utter and blatant devotion.
The words themselves, 
    not just their power, magic and what they mean.
Like charms and spells, 
    such bewitched words only work
    if the readers and hearers believe in them.
Such evocative words inspire 
    feelings and emotions in readers
    primed to be receptive to their charms.
Musical evocative words, 
    that resonate and echo deep within.

Poets are wordsmiths, artists, musicians, 
     performers, sages and soothsayers,
    driven by the love of words, to create masterpieces 
    in artful word craft:
It is the color of saying.

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The Color of Saying

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