Stratford overflows with poetry. Out on a walk the other day, I took some notes on where I find poetry (or better yet, where poetry finds me). Walking provides the body with rhythm, while nature and the imagination provide the rest. One only need to know how and where to look to find cases and causes of poetry everywhere. I invite you to try it out on your next walk or car ride: collect five images or sensations that strike you or seem to call out to your attention. What is it about the shadow falling just so across the neighbor’s gable that always catches your eye? Did you notice that stepping on sun-crisp grass feels like walking on new snow? Does a cloud sleep and of what would it dream?
Simply words. Simply sensations. Note-taking is the perfect medium for walking. Quick jots and jolts of inspiration. Poems may come later or may be the notes themselves. Poetry is funny like that, it has a way of suddenly appearing, and never in the guise you’d planned for it. Like asking a friend out to a fancy dinner and they arrive in a gorilla costume. A poet is one who is willing to dine with a gorilla and learn its version of small talk.
I encourage you to take a pencil and pad, or use whatever app on your phone will store your observations. You may surprise yourself with what you notice. You may be surprised by the troop of gorillas or grackles living in the tree outside your kitchen window. Here are my notes from a recent walk while running a few errands:
- Telephone line shadows mark the road like staves on a music sheet. What notes would bird shadows make? The overall tune of the street?
- Overheard snippet of conversation: “getting older is not for sissies” (as a middle-aged sissy, this is why I insist on staying young…)
- An osprey jets by with a fish—an astronaut! As Kay Ryan wrote in her fabulous poem Osprey:
- “He fishes, riding four-pound salmon / home like rockets.”
- Wishing folks “good morning” even though it’s well after noon
- The fecundity of farmer’s market lines: conversation always on the vine
- The way a succulent hovers like a cherub in a rococo painting above two friends laughing at a cafe table
- Strips of thin pink plastic woven into a robin’s nest
- Rain-smudged, abandoned game of sidewalk chalk tic-tac-toe (no one won)
- An iguana’s silhouette howls at the moon on a stranger’s t-shirt
- Greetings from an ancient and very solemn, very dignified dog
- Neighbors asking “Did you see that storm?”
Adrian Dallas Frandle is a poet, editor, educator, & former chef. They have served as Poetry Editor for several small presses, both online & in print. “Book of Extraction: Poems with Teeth” was published in 2023 by Kith Books. Recent work has been featured in Poet Lore, Honey Literary, & The Connecticut Literary Anthology (Woodhall Press). Read more at adriandallas.com.
