Poetic Prose - lyrical, mystical, poetry reading, religious poetry, free verse, sonnets,

-about poetry-

Can it be said that poetry is no longer relevant?......or worse, that this progenitor of the arts, Apollo’s gift, in all its radiant, former glory, is now dead?

Hardly! Indeed, there is one living whose poetry uplifts, informs, and harmonizes language with music. In Optics: The Mystical Poet’s Guide to the Science of Inner Sight, Vincent Carver Gilliam, Ph.D. writes not only for the ear, but for the mind and the eye.

Have you wondered what Frost meant when he said – "free verse is like playing tennis with the net down!"
Have you ever thought free verse not only liberated poetry from rigid forms, it liberated our language from poetry altogether?
Language devoid of melody is not poetry – it is just prose!

Duke Ellington said “It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing!”
Melody’s the thing that makes this poetry swing!
“A rose, in bloom, / Caressed by my Beloved’s grace… / Two red petals /
On my face displace / These eyes / Pressed with dew / And dripping salt….”
Copyright © 2005 Vincent Carver Gilliam

For those especially interested in literature, we offer this question– what would you have if you crossed a Shakespearean sonnet with free verse?

Answer: poetry seemingly unstructured yet rhythmic and melodic. Dr. Gilliam calls it PoeticProse™, the only viable form in the aftermath of free verse, but a form which nonetheless should be as musical to the ear and edifying to the intellect as it should be inspiring to the soul.

From: Optics: The Mystical Poet’s Guide to the Science of Inner Sight.

“Although free verse liberated our language for a new infinitely rich poetry, its point has been made many times over. Free verse has been restricted to being a prosaic reaction to the past and not a creation of the future. Further, there is little now to separate what many call poetry from prose aside from an intellectually intense imagery which the public has rightly rejected as tedious. Therefore, if poetry is not the saying of what is of utmost importance charged with the music of its saying, it admittedly does not deserve the name poetry.”

"As fiction is successful by coming to life as a story unfolding within the reader's imagination, poetry is successful by coming to life as it resonates in memory, as it transforms language into a dance, through repetition, between meaning and music. Thus, we reread a novel to relive its beauty. Whereas, we reread a poem to reveal its beauty, because only through repetition does its beauty become resonant and alive in us. Poetry should encourage us by its very nature to be indulgent toward it, and if a poem does not inspire in us a desire to reread it again and again, it is a failure.”