At supper tonight, a friend was telling me that she is looking forward to attending Thursday night’s poetry/music gig. But she couldn’t understand why I chose to read/write poetry.

“Why not stories?” she asked.

I told her that I do write in other genres but I chose poetry as my concentration because it required deep thought to write and read. Not that prose is easy to write, but poetry buries textured truths in metaphor which require those who seek it to search deliberately. What may be investigated in a novel is compressed in 32 lines of a poem.

The German word for poetry is Gedichte or Dichtung. The definition of poetry in German encompasses the idea of compression or density–to condense a thought or theme. The English understanding of poetry embraces beauty and harmony–graceful elegance.

My hope is that in four days I present condensed ideas in a lyrical framework.