Liftoff

As soon as my toddler grandson was able to walk steadily, he loved watching the washing machine cycle. As it sloshed suds from side to side, he would swing his hips in rhythm. A steady beat can set most small children dancing, a visceral appeal that extends up the years to a love of lively rhymes. Witness the massive popularity with youngsters of Dennis Lee’s famous “Alligator Pie” that bounces and skips along:

Alligator pie, alligator pie
If I don’t get some I think I’m gonna die.
Give away the green grass, give away the sky,
But don’t give away my alligator pie….

Spoken Word artists are attuned to the power of rhythm. Poets who write primarily for the page tend to opt for free verse, and where anything is possible, often rhythm is forgotten. The poem lies flat for the head to ponder but misses getting under the skin to tickle sensation and lift words off the page.

Liftoff may be subtle, as in a sonnet’s iambic pentameter serving more as the rails gliding the train of thought forward than the poetic locomotive itself. Or it may be more pronounced, as in e.e. cummings’s delightfully wavering lines:

Anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
Spring summer autumn winter
He sang his didn’t he danced his did....

My next challenge as a poet? How to open up more rhythm within my own free verse.