Why Poetry

Jeffrey Taylor

April 21, 2021

“…poetry is not medicine—it’s an X-Ray” —Dunya Mikhail

“I write to find out what I think.” —Joan Didion

I write, sometimes, to know what I feel,

an X-Ray of sorts.  Of myself.

Sometimes I find something

I need to heal and reach out

for another’s poetry.  Mary Oliver

works.  Her poem, “The Journey,”

shows a place inside which reaches

for words it cannot find

on its own.  The articulation task

falls to another.  If I do not find it

out there, I must go into the caves

with no light beyond what I bring

to find images left by others for reasons

of their own.  I may or may not fathom them.

I may find a meaning that was not

the reason they imprinted the likenesses

of now extinct animals on the walls.

From inside, I hope to emerge

with some revelation.

It will require many trips.

Jeffrey L. Taylor never received anything higher than a C in English throughout school and college. Through articles in recreational computer journals, he learned to write with rhythm and conciseness, often too concise. In poetry, that is not a problem. Around 1990, poems began waking him in the night. He now writes in the day.