In a recent post, i shared a poem by Maya Angelou.

Some confessions…..

i don’t often read poetry.

i don’t often understand poetry.

the way that some people read poetry makes me “feel” it.

sort of the way i once heard someone read something from the book of Isaiah.  I can’t remember the chapter now that she read from.  And i’m not even sure where i was when i heard it (perhaps at our Georgia District ladies retreat)……but i just remember this lady opening her Bible and reading a portion of scripture from Isaiah and all of the sudden i understood it and FELT it.  i remember following along in my Bible as she read and wondering why i’d never thought to read those phrases in the way she was doing it.  it was as if she was living it…she was there…..it was not just written words, but life, breathing from the page.

the way Ms. Liz reads her poems on Sunday mornings.  when she’s written some special poem about Fall, or Veteran’s Day or Grandparents day.  

So this week i was trying to entertain myself while Paige and Lauren were doing the mall thing.  It seems they don’t have lots of malls in England, and Paige and Lauren have been there several times this week.  They went off to look for a purse for Lauren and i went into the bookstore.

I found a book by Maya Angelou…..written back in 1970!  I’d heard of it, but never realized it was something she’d written almost 30 years ago.  Well actually, 30 years ago exactly, cause although the cover said it was published in 1970, it was copywrighted in 1969 by Ms. Angelou.

I’ve been reading it this week, but very slowly, because the writing is so beautiful…almost like reading poetry instead of a novel. 

I’ll come to a paragraph when she is describing something and i find that i want to stop and read it out loud (like a good poem) so that i can hear how the words sound together and i can actually feel the picture she is describing.

One of my favorites is the way she describes the store that her grandmother owned and that she worked in as a child:

“…..Alone and empty in the mornings, it looked like an unopened present from a stranger.  Opening the front doors was pulling the ribbon off the unexpected gift.  The light would come in softly (we faced north), easing itself over the shelves of mackerel, salmon, tobacco, thread.  It fell flat on the big vat of lard and by noontime duing the summer the grease had softened to a thick soup.  Whenever i walked into the Store in the afternoon, I sensed that it was tired.  I alone could hear the slow pulse of its job half done.  But just before bedtime, after numerous people had walked in and out, had argued over their bills, or joked about their neighbors, or just dropped in “to give Sister Henderson a ‘Hi ya’ll,” the promise of magic mornings returned to the Store and spread itself over the famly in washed life waves.” 

Wow.  My grandmother never owned a grocery store.  I never spent time in a grocery store before the doors ever opened to the public.  But i totally understand how that feels now.

That is some amazing writing to me.

It makes me want to write better lyrics.  To understand that i’m not just searching for the perfect rhyme to finish the line, but the perfect thought, the perfect feeling that expresses what it is that i’m feeling as i write.

it’s good timing that i bought that book this week.  cause i’m in the midst of finishing up a song idea that my co-writer sent to me and it needs more than a great hook, it needs great intensity and passion and movement.  he provides some of that through his melody….and i need to match it with lyric.