I bought a book of poetry by Billy Collins at City Lights bookstore in San Francisco in 2017 or thereabouts. I love it.
The poet through his poems makes us look at poetry in everyday images bringing the real to the surreal or the surreal to the real.
Today I lived a poem on my piano. I bled over two simple pieces I had memorized for an exam last August. I’m still making mistakes.
Poems themselves are perfect; it’s the reader that’s flawed. We mis-read, misinterpret, mis-much of what is meant or bring too much to the experience of simply reading the poem.
My piano poem had no rhyme, but it did have melodious chords, repetitive sequences and moments of joy when I played a passage correctly. Mathew my music teacher would have understood my poem written in bars with scales and lines to support the notes. There were signatures, clefs and keys with a few rests as needed. I won’t mention the beat. It is too close to the concept of beating. Yes, I do beat myself up when I don’t get it right.