Sometimes I think the best right speechifying I do is when I write poetry. Perhaps that is because it comes from the heart, not the head, and it's truth rests in imagry that connects with others' experiences. The poems are personal, not meant to represent anyone else's point of view. It's harder to get inside anyone else's mindstream and I am an observer only when I do describe another. I know my limitations. So if the poem is about my granddaughter or a bird or a flower, the subjectivity is obvious, not hidden. I'm describing how all this impacts me.
When I read poetry I also take it personally. Not is this poem great or important, but why it means so much to me. Wordsworth's daffodils have stayed in my consciousness because of my own joy of nature and the miracle of spring. Gerald Manley Hopkins' "Spring and Fall to a Young Child" tackles the childhood sense and puzzlement about mortality. I found it expressed the inexpressible when I was twelve and my grandmother died and then my boyfriend. Shakespeare's sonnets showed my how complicated love is, and how powerful, when I felt lost in my being in love and felt I didn't know what was going on. Mary Oliver shows the importance of nature and animals and aging, all of which are central to my being.
When I wrote a blessing for my daughter's wedding recently, I wrote it as a poem, so it would be true to my heart and my own experience of the couple. That way, I was getting as close to right speech as I was able. Poems are the heart singing.
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