7/24/2018

Getting Down With A Poem Commission

By Timothy Allen


Humanity likes to believe that it exerts control over the world. This is true to some extent. Humanity can and does indeed often exert control over its surroundings. Of course, this control is limited. There are some things to do not lend themselves well to human intervention. Yet there are also some things that do lend themselves well to human intervention. Things like beauty. The world is full of it, and naturally so, but that does not mean that humanity cannot create more of it. Indeed, it often does, sometimes through a poem commission.

A poem is a series of words. But it is also so much more than that. The words at the end are supposed rhyme, but they do not always have to. The main thrust is the length and the emotion behind the words. They have to pack punch, they must go right through the core of the reader or the listener. They cannot just fall on unseeing eyes or deaf ears. They have to stick. They cannot just bounce off.

A commission is a job. Its when a person who does not have an artistic inclination agrees to pay a fee to someone who does. The money is the main variable. In effect, its an economic transaction.

There is a reason that people commission poems or other types of art. Mainly because they want to create a memorial to the self, to commemorate themselves in some way, shape, or form. But also because they just want to experience some beauty that is tailor made to them.

There is only one singular purpose to a poem. That is to create. To make people think. To be heard and read, and then to make the people doing that hearing and reading feel something. Even if it just the tiniest sliver of emotion, it is enough. That is the purpose of prose, to create an emotion not previously felt in the immediate past. It can inspire or it can demoralize, but the fact is that it has to make someone emotional to some small degree.

Poets do not grow on trees. They can found in certain places, however. Places such as a cafe, but it would probably have to be an indie cafe, and they are most common during the local open mic night. Of course, they can also be found around college campuses. Then there is the internet, as they all kinds of artists can be found online.

Starving artists should be a thing of the past. The fact is that poets are people, and as people, they have needs, which are going to cost money in order to be met. Besides, a commission is explicitly about money, about how one party is paying money to the other in exchange for an artistic service.

Now, the most important factor when finding a poet is the overall skill. Anyone with a dictionary can put a bunch of words together, can put together a bunch of sentences. But not everyone can create prose, and it is this prose that is the lifeblood of the poem. A good way to check this is to simply get some writing samples, as some poets are going to have some of their works ready as samples.

The reality of the world is that it is not pretty. It is ugly, it is cruel, and it is wild. But not always. There are times when can be so beautiful that a person can be driven to tears.




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