Spooks and Odd Folks

Ever since my mother pushed me in our backyard swing to the rhythm of Stevenson's "How Do You Like to Go Up in a Swing?" I sensed that traditional poetry--with rhyme, meter, imagery, and storytelling--was the heartbeat of life itself. From that time, I've loved hearing, reading, and writing such verse. When I encountered "free" verse, I knew it was not the voice for me. The characters and creatures whose stories I wanted to tell were those outside the pale of normality-"weird and wild," in Poe's phrase-and I felt that their depiction was best served (and versed) by a structured framework. We can't fight chaos with chaos, but we can "put it into fourteen lines and make it good," as Millay said about the sonnet. In this ballet for metrical "feet,"I let these beings speak for themselves, disappearing behind each one like a ballerina interpreting a chosen role. Your dancer may wear a pirate's boot, a dinosaur's claw, or an angel's weightless foot, but the toe slippers of discipline and dedication, dipped in the rosin of Reason, lie behind them all. The role is created by the soles-and her soul. "Come join the dance!"