I love poetry. The way words can come together, go far beyond communication into the realm of art. A poem could be like a picture, saying a thousand words beyond what is stated in a single stanza. Playing with words is like playing with paint: a single drop on a paper is considered art to some, in the least. Poetry can be intricate and rhyming with accurate meter, appealing to the same readers who love the realistic art form. For other people, poetry can be simple, following set verse, such as a haiku, appealing to those ones who, enjoy symmetry. Then there is poetry without rhyme, and often without reason, but always just as beautiful or profound. This is the equivalent to abstract art, almost the complete opposite to realism. They tell a story, deeper and more intricate than what can be said within the confines of a rhyme, such as Picasso’s Guernica, one of the most powerful anti-war paintings in history. There are sonnets and odes and elegies and love poems that are their own category, sparking a very different emotion in a reader the way Michaelangelo’s Creation of Adam or Rafael’s Three Graces makes one feel that they have been exposed to something personal and beautiful.
As a ballroom dancer, every poem to me is like a dance. Poetry with rhyme and meter are beautiful in their precision like an international standard tango, constricted to staying within the frame, but carrying so much meaning in its structure and precision. A Haiku has a set verse like a basic step repeated over and over, though still each movement different from the last; an outstretched arm here, a turning out there, like a bolero. A love poem is an American Waltz, swaying, rising and falling like human emotions; the movement never stopping until the very end. Every poem is a different song to which people can dance their own dance with their own interpretation to the rhythm in the music.
My Waltzing Words 