Too many long periods in between postings. Life is hectic and busy with a baby in the house.

Baby update: Samuel's started sleeping through the night, and my brain is recovering from sleep shortage. It's something to think of how much he's grown since he was born. Hard to believe he was an itsy-bitsy baby, when he's turned into a babbling, brabbling 14 pound baby.

Thinking about Poetry, and preparing to write about it. I don't know if it's ever possible to define what it is that makes a poem a poem and what makes a poet a poet. Some thoughts passing through...

Poetry and the definition thereof is an illusive thing. Some say a poet is someone who engages the act of writing poetry, and there are those who say a poet is not a poet unless called a poet by other poets.

But what is poetry and when do we say a poem is a poem?

Someone once said to me that a true poet is an artist who sees beyond the leaf. I remember puzzling over this sentence, and desiring to live up to the person’s view of me as being a poet and an artist.

In seeking to understand poetry, I see how poetry is an art form in the sense of how it continues to speak regardless of the passage of time.

Just as works of art are sculpted out of material such as clay, rock, marble or wood; just as paintings are produced by brush on canvas or some mixed media; so, poetry is a shaping of art out of the material of words.

But how do we produce this art? How do we give birth to works that will transcend space and time? How do we sculpt words so that they become lasting works that touch the human spirit?

A poet, whose work is an inspiration, speaks of poetry as being a way of life. This same description of poetry is also applied by the true musician to his music, and by the true artist to his art. Poetry that lasts (just like art and music) proceeds from life itself.

I'm still pondering these things and wondering too why it is that some interpret christian writing as being necessarily "christian", "godly", or "evangelical".

update

Yay! Blogger has let me back in . Blogger weirdness is one reason why I started an lj. But I do miss rambling on blogger. Perhaps it's the blog format, or the way the letters look when I'm typing.

So, while I was absent from blogger, Chickflicks has published "Falling in Love".

Some bug attacked Haruah, managing to erase everything backwards up to January--or was it early February? Drat! I've been soooo absent from the Net. Stuff has been retrieved and rebuilt, and Haruah is back online and accepting subs again, and lo and behold, we are now a paying market.

I've also volunteered myself to write an intermittent column about poetry (what else). I'm not a major poet, but I think I've read enough good poetry to know it when I see it. Also, I thought it would be a good idea to encourage readers to go out and explore, read more, venture out into the deep, dare to read the experimental as well as the known.

Said column will bear the title "In Pursuit of Poetry". Defining poetry is illusive (hence the"In pursuit" part), so I leave defining poetry to the experts and have decided to document what it is I've learned so far, and why certain works are poetry and why some are not.

Anyway, if blogger permits, I'll be using this blog as a sort of notebook on stuff I'm thinking about before it becomes all cohesive.