An Short Essay About Poetry

[Richard Roark]

Here is an essay/introduction that I wrote for poetry and my poems. I wrote this for a small self published book, by self published I mean from my printer, that I have done on my own that includes most of my poems and a short testament story about my "conversion" over to Objectivism from Catholicism. I ask people not to be to critical of my grammar in this as I am working continously to improve my grammar. I hope you enjoy.

Poetry is the iron used to pump the muscle of the mind, the brain. At least this is how I view poetry. In both the reading and the writing of poetry it forces the mind to work and the individual to think. This is the primary reason I write poetry, it forces me to exercise my mind getting me to think. Does this mean that I am a Poet. No, I have and always will refer to myself as a writer. By this I mean that I am a person who is uses words to express my ideas on paper. Poetry is just a means to this end though. I find poetry both fun and exciting, both hard and rewarding. Also a poem allows me to write a complicated piece that expresses several ideas in a short space and it allows me to achieve this goal rather quickly as well. I do desire and wish to write longer and more complicated work. Yet, these longer and more complicated pieces of work require time, hard work and most important much more thought put into each piece. Poetry in away is just the build up and the exercise my mind and my writing needs before I begin to go into larger endeavors.

Now it could be said that I just don’t want to do the work required for my other projects. This could be farther from the truth. You, the reader, will understand once you read the poems and the short story at the end of this small collection that the ideas I am expressing are very complex. In time, I hope I will have the required time needed to translate many of the ideas you find in the poetry and the story at the end into more complicated fiction and non-fiction works. I am always preparing for when those days come.

Anyway, I wish you happy reading and enjoy the poems.

Keith Engel

Edited March 23, 2005 by Richard Roark