A letter to brother Al . . . 

Al, wonderful article on the poetics of ice skating! I haven’t skated in years, but we used to do quite a lot on the Wood River near our house in RI. It’s where I first learned how to actually skate for more than 30 seconds. However, for all my love of poetry, I had never thought of skating as a metaphor for poetry composition, until I read this article! I love the fact that both skating and poetry writing can consist of twists and twirls and leaps, some of them totally unplanned. It’s what poetry has gradually become for me; like Klopstock, I’ve started bringing "abruptness and glowing turns to poetry”, just letting my hands “skate” across the keyboard in pure fun. I’m going to keep this metaphor in mind these next few weeks as I skate around with words. 

Here’s a little quick skating:

He sat down to write, 

but soon he saw

that the words were doing the writing, 

not he.

He sat back and watched 

as words swirled and twisted 

across the screen,

spinning and spiraling

and spraying up ideas 

as they skated around 

with recklessness. 

Surely this is not poetry,

he said, 

but the words didn’t care 

and kept smiling 

and kicking up their steely sounds,

so he let them go 

and gave them a shout 

and a slippery cheer.  

 

That little skate took about 10 minutes. What fun! (No publisher would want it, but why would a lover of skating care?)

Thanks, Albie!

Ham