On the Content of Poetry

by Richard Stoltzfoos

Write more poems about plants.
The potted kind, yes, but also thickets and forests, and trees
Of definite kinds—the tulip poplar could,
I think, stand a little more mention.
Of the trees with deadly fruit, perhaps one
May remain in your garden.

Write more poems with color.
A poem should not be gray discourse.
You can never have too much gold in your poem
(You can, but never let it be said),
And like gold the colors should be real objects.

Write poems with metals.
The iron and the steel of the artistic temperament,
Brass and copper and chrome-plate
And the aforementioned gold.

Write poems with math,
Especially the shapes.
The satisfying spirals, the mysterious Mandelbrot set,
Terrifying in exactly the right way;
And squares of sunlight in a poem are never really
Disliked.

Write poems with jewels.
This is not vain if you aim to live one day
In a city with gates made from a single
Pearl, and twelve specific gems just
For symbol and pure jubilance.

Write poems with music.
The exact Italian terms don’t matter
So much as the shape of the tune
And the organ’s tone and the build of the harmony
And the free human hexameters of the blind Greek
Who with a fair voice and undying glory
Sits with a scribe by the city gate.

Richard Stoltzfoos is the son of Adin,
son of Wilmer,
son of Elam,
son of Moses,
son of Samuel,
son of John,
son of Christian,
son of Nicholas Stoltzfus,
who in the year 1766 emigrated from Europe,
being born of Christian Gottlieb Stoltzfus,
of the Saxon line of that name
which began in the year of our Lord 400,
by the provision of God, in German Saxony.

Photography by Kenneth Godoy