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Welcome to But Does it Rhyme?
We're a small, but hopefully growing, band of poets who like to talk about our craft and share what we've written. We'll highlight favorite poets, review new books, and explore the process of writing poetry from inspiration to conclusion. (We might venture into essays and short fiction, too.) We hope you'll like our blog — and contribute your own thought and poems.

Sally Zakariya, Poetry Editor
Richer Resources Publications

Charan Sue Wollard (LivermoreLit)
Kevin Taylor (Poet-ch'i)
Sherry Weaver Smith
(SherrysKnowledgeQuest)

books
Richer Resources Publications

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Are You a Walt or an Emily?

A class I’m taking is reading Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, two very different 19th-century American poets who, each in his own way, transformed American poetry—Dickinson with her reclusive, particularist rhymed verse, and Whitman with his loose, expansive, universalist lines. Many contemporary American poets fall into one camp or the other, the lyric or the bardic. Am I an Emily or a Walt? More likely neither, but here, for the sake of argument, is a little poem of mine inspired by Emily’s line “In the name of the bee.”

Why I Do Not Trim My Mint

In the herb garden the mint slants
north, each stalk its own compass needle

Finding their way, three bees hover over
the blossoms, drawn by the promise of pollen

Their busy buzz lulls me as I laze
here on the porch, dreaming of blooms

and of the world bees make possible
for us, a world of fields and fruitfulness

Cut the mint before it flowers, they say
but where would these three forage then?

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Galway Kinnell, 1927-2014

With the death of Galway Kinnell in late October, America lost one of its premier poets. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, among other distinctions, Kinnell blended the political and the philosophical in his work, which was often compared to that of Walt Whitman. In a 1985 speech, he recalled having been a silent child who felt isolated from others. “Gradually I felt that if I was ever going to have a happy life,” he said, “it was going to have to do with poetry.” That kind of happiness can be a quietly private thing, as suggested by the closing lines from Kinnell’s 2006 poem “Why Regret?”

Doesn’t it outdo the pleasures of the brilliant concert
to wake in the night and find ourselves
holding hands in our sleep?

For more on Kinnell’s life and work, visit the Poetry Foundation and the Academy of American Poets.

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It's Alive!

Anyone who thinks poetry is a dying art hasn’t been online recently. One of the great things about writing poems is discovering audiences and venues for them. Case in point: Poppy Road Review, an online journal that posts new work almost daily. (Full disclosure: my poem “Velocity” appeared on September 22; you can find it by clicking on “older posts” at the bottom of the home page and then scrolling a bit.) And by the way, the journal’s founder and editor, Sandy Benitez, is also head of Flutter Press, which publishes chapbooks in nice, old-fashioned paper. Thanks, Sandy.

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Introducing …

Canadian poet Kevin Taylor, a frequent contributor here, has introduced us to a new poet, Brandon Moreau. Here’s his first published poem—welcome, Brandon!

Portrait of a Man
By Brandon Moreau

A frozen lake in Iceland, volcanic underneath the crown
with sideburn-streaks of pumice, rough and well-weathered

On the face of it,
leather, crafted and aged by a tanner,
inlaid with rounded brown glass
and Native American porcupine-quill beads.
(It won't wear out, no matter what they say.)

Rising rounded foothills
lead to a craggy bend
and the helping hand of a Maker (a word heavy with weight).

And at the heart of the piece
inside a bursting chest of memory
the treasures of a life
of friendship
of parenthood

Held together by ancient leather straps
the cargo-box of a stagecoach
hinged on love … my father.

Brandon Moreau was born in Anchorage in 1983. He lives in Los Angeles, where he is presently attending seminary. Combining the arts of poetry and storytelling, he is working on a short story written entirely in rhyming verse. "Portrait of a Man" is one of a series of poems written as odes to specific people in his life.

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A Friend Writes

Last month I posted some questions about writing poetry, along with my answers. My friend Beth Isham, whose mayfly poem appeared here a while ago, sent some answers of her own. Beth, who has a lifetime’s worth of written memoirs, says she’s currently downsizing some as poems. This is from her comments on the writing process:

I had been doing early morning descriptions of a "through the window glass" diary/journal. The trees have gotten taller during the past year and now hide the chimney. I suppose when I see smoke coming up from the trees this winter, I'll begin thinking of the Indians who once lived here. I did a diary of an orchid going into bloom (maybe I should rewrite it from the viewpoint of the orchid).

Sounds like Beth has a good idea for a poem. What’s yours? Send a writing prompt to             poetryeditor@RicherResourcesPublications.com

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Crash and Burn

OK, there was no fire, but my computer crashed fatally a month ago, and so did the external backup drive I had trusted to keep everything safe. Some geek wizardry and $$$ later, I have most of my old files back, including my poems. Rummaging through the older ones is like looking through a family album, a mixture of wry smiles and shudders of embarrassment. Here’s a short piece I rediscovered from years ago:

Black Hole, or The Inevitability of Love

When I walked through that door
I knew I would not be coming back

Two dwindling stars circling a black hole--
how close could I come before I reached

the point of no return, succumbing
to the power of your implacable pull

A knot had been tied in the universe
that could not be untied

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Protest Poetry

“For centuries, poets were the mouthpieces railing loudly against injustice,” writes NPR critic Juan Vidal in a thought-provoking essay “Where Have All the Poets Gone?” There’s plenty to rail against today, from Ferguson to ISIS, but the poetry of protest is at an all-time low in America. “We need our poets now more than ever,” Vidal writes. “In fact, they should be on the front lines--at rallies and marches--questioning and rebuking whatever systems they deem poisonous to civil society.”

I plan to take up his challenge. 

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What Are You Writing?

Why should we get all the bylines? Submit your latest poem—just one for now—and we’ll publish the poems we like best in an upcoming blog post. Simultaneous submissions are fine, but please let us know if the poem is accepted or published elsewhere. Send your poem, plus a few lines about yourself, in the body of an e-mail message to:

            poetryeditor@RicherResourcesPublications.com