I’ve recently discovered a new pleasure in my literary adventures as a sometime book designer and editor, through the complex process of formatting poems for publication.
A client, who previously retained my services for the production of two children’s books, has now asked me to produce a chapbook of her poetry, the fruits of many years of meditation upon the vicissitudes of life.
Her poems are deep, insightful probings into a wide variety of topics, from the joyous to the heartrending, and I’ve enjoyed reading them for their own sake. But entering more deeply into their complexity, through formatting for production, has yielded unforeseen insights.
All who love poetry immerse themselves in the many layers of poetic form, and I write poetry and have published my own chapbook; yet editing the work of another allows for a different reading.
As a musician,
I love the music of language,
the importance of phrasing,
finding the rhythmic cadences,
and the vital breaks.
As a writer and artist,
I am visually oriented,
making form and pattern
vital to my enjoyment
of the written word.
Poetry is, I feel, a synthesis of the visual and the auditory; the format delineates our journey through the mind of the poet, and the musicality, which we hear in our minds or through the spoken word, resonates with the emotions.
I am learning much through this editing process – not only about the differences inherent in editing poetry as opposed to prose, but also in a deeper understanding of my own poems, both past and future.
I look forward to sharing my client’s book with you when published, hoping her work will resonate with you as much as it has with me. For, at its best, poetry is the music of the soul, singing the songlines of our life’s trajectory and articulating its yearnings. In common with all well-crafted forms of art, it has a subtle pedagogic power, teaching without didacticism, and luring us into greater understanding.
… and if we are fortunate – and if we pay attention – we never stop learning, always immersing ourselves more fully in the profundity of life and the remarkable phenomenon we call Consciousness.
