From a lawn chair to the clouds...

Photo courtesy of PublicDomainPictures.net

"To me, 

poetry is a marriage 

of craft and imagination.  

The making of a poem 

requires attention

 to form, sound, 

revision, and precision. 

(…) 

But imagination lifts you 

from a lawn chair to the clouds.  

And this is the mystery of poetry." 

~ Christine E. Hemp,

 in The Place My Words are Looking For

Hemp's image of imagination lifting poets "from a lawn chair to the clouds" makes me smile and nod.  Yes, it's important for writers to pay attention to the actual crafting of their poems.  But if that's the only thing we focus on, we'll be stuck sitting in our metaphorical lawn chairs, feet on the ground.  To soar to the clouds with our poems, we also need a healthy dose of imagination.