take the leaf of a tree
 trace its exact shape
 the outside edges
 and inner lines
 memorize the way it is fastened to the twig
 (and how the twig arches from the branch)
 how it springs forth in April
 how it is panoplied in July
 by late August
 crumple it in your hand
 so that you smell its end-of-summer sadness
 chew its woody stem
 listen to its autumn rattle
 watch it as it atomizes in the November air
 then in winter
 when there is no leaf left
       invent one

As I’ve remarked before, poets as a class are inordinately fond of commenting on the nature of poetry itself, and doing it in verse. I like this trend for several reasons - for one, I’m a big fan of self-reference in all its myriad incarnations; for another, it bespeaks a sense of play that I feel can only enhance a poet’s work. And not least of all, because poetry itself is a wonderfully poetic topic, and that some truly beautiful poems have been written on it.

I particularly like today’s poem because it sums up a number of my own feelings about poetry (and, for that matter, about Art in general), and far better than I could have. Merriam conjures up a beautiful evocation of the creative process, seamlessly interspersed with a verse picture of a leaf, and culminating in an unexpected, but oh-so-satisfyingly right conclusion.

The form is well-chosen too - the shortage of capitalisation, far from obtruding itself on the reader’s notice, stays in the background, lending the poem an air of quietness, while the lack of punctuation emphasises the smoothly evolving flow of the images. In Merriam’s own words, “a good poem contains both meaning and music”, and today’s certainly fits both criteria.

Biography

Eve Merriam is a poet, playwright, director, and lecturer. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1916, she attended Cornell University, University of Pennsylvania, University of Wisconsin, Columbia University, and has has taught and lectured at many other institutions. Her first book, Family Circle (1946), was selected for the Yale Series of Younger Poets by Archibald MacLeish. In addition to her adult poetry, she has also written picture books and a number of books of poetry for children, including There is No Rhyme for Silver (1964), It Doesn’t Always Have to Rhyme (1964), The Inner City Mother Goose (1969), Catch a Little Rhyme (1966), Finding a Poem (1970), Out Loud (1973), and Rainbow Writing (1976). The controversial Inner City Mother Goose, which Merriam once referred to as “just about the most banned book in the country,” was the basis for a 1971 Broadway musical, Inner City, and a second musical production, Street Dreams (1982), which was performed in San Francisco, Chicago and New York City. In 1981, she was named the winner of the NCTE Award for Ex.

– http://www.poets.org/lit/poet/emerriam.htm

Links

A nice list of metapoems (from where I got today’s) can be found at
http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/poetry/index.html

We’ve also run several on minstrels - see, in particular, the week starting with poem #186

— Martin