Thursday, February 01, 2007

The Poet's Pain
By Don Iannone

I wonder seriously
if I'd have my poetry
if I didn't have my pain.
You may smile smugly, thinking perhaps
you know my pain.
Rest assured, you don't, and
frankly, there's no need for you
to know my pain.
After all, it's mine, and
you have your own pain--
giving rise to your poetry, maddening dreams,
insufferable prognostications, fits of sexual hallucination,
or even drunken spells leaving you numb.
Yes, poets suffer...
not first with their poetry, but with life.
And those reading poetry suffer too...
not with the poetry they read, but also with life.
I think of Oscar Wilde, who once said:
We are all in the gutter,
but some of us are looking at the stars.
Wilde's point isn't that misery loves company, rather
some of us are more able to use our misery
to see life awhole, including its pain.
For some of us, poetry is our weapon of choice
in seeing the reality of pain,
without the rose-colored glasses.

12 comments:

gautami tripathy said...

poetry and pain..

hope all is well with you, don!

tao1776 said...

There is nothing I can add to this Don! Nuff said!

QUASAR9 said...

Alas Don,
the reality strikes hard
The reaility is cold as steel
But we go with the flow
when it's warm we may glow
and when it hurts we really know
we can do little but kneel & bow

For the pain comes like the rain
and the fun shines warm in the Sun

We are Spirit for sure for sure
but wrapped in flesh, we bleed
just as surely as we eat & feed

Linda Jones Malonson said...

But poetry, especially coming from pain and suffering, can be so very healing. Enjoyed the read.

polona said...

better look at the stars than indulge in misery... great advice!
i've been busy of late... hope all's well.

Don Iannone, D.Div., Ph.D. said...

Thanks Polona, Amias, Quasar, Gautami, and Tim.

Pain is indeed part of life, like death is a part of life.

I am very well, thanks.

Amias, so good to see you around and about. I hope you're doing well these days.

Spread your joy around.

Don

Bob said...

Apparently the Dalai Lama said, "Pain is unavoidable, suffering is not."

I very much like the punch line at the end of your poem.

Janice Thomson said...

Writing is definitely a release for pain...sometimes reading our writing opens our eyes to a different aspect that might otherwise be missed...this is a saha world wherein we gain our enlightenment but you are right that enlightenment comes quicker "if some of us are looking at the stars" ... much enjoyed your verse Don

Borut said...

Can relate, in my own way, to that! In the two years of writing haiku, I’ve been through some of the brightest moments of my life, but the moments of pain were almost on the same level!:) Join and pain go hand in hand. Those who have been chased from the garden of Eden of inspiration, from time to time, as it invariably happens, will know the feeling - I’m just a beginner!:) I suppose every joy must have its shadow: the greater the joy, the greater the shadow!?:)

floots said...

one that i've often thought about
sharing the pain/experience
often brings out the fragile beauty of such things
nice piece
thank you

iamnasra said...

I dont know what to tell you this had add more into the pool that at times pull me into its water...

the pinch that you pretend that it does not exist but its there it pinch the most delicate part of you and that is your heart and as a poet you can not disclude your self from that pain that you are in but the hardest is to see others in pain or unfairness you seem to hear and touch their pain too and you try to tell yourself that this pain is not yours and you should not be there feeling it...but it exist and its so sore a fresh wound that keeps acheing on you..

Don Iannone, D.Div., Ph.D. said...

My thanks to all willing to look at the light and the dark and how the two depend on each other.

There is nothing to be healed, only forgotten, like all else that distracts us from our true nature.

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