RANDY HUFF: A Poem That Wants to Be

I heard an acclaimed poet say poems seek their own metre, shape, rhythm, style. Anything can be a poem, I guess. Every life is a poem. Of course we imagine poems are always beautiful. Not so. What makes a poem? I wonder. Words, but no. Ideas are first and only. Poets existed before writing. But words go first with ideas, not writing. True. Maybe it is easier to say what poetry is not. (Sounds like work!) Poetry happens when supple minds give concepts a voice in words. And the words are worthy of the concept. Architecture is poetry without words, as is music. Perhaps all art is poetry, just with different conveyances. “Conveyances?” “Embodiment” works better but fails still. Poets seek the right word for the idea. But I’m stuck on architecture. Brutalist architecture of the late Soviet Union revealed the soul, words of steel and concrete and blandest color. Function determines everything. Hang form. Hang beauty. What is the architecture of my boyhood? Geography, necessity, and chance — all sub-categories of one another — inspired it all. The veranda of Spanish progeny spoke Mexican proximity. The boring bungalows of endless variant spoke both necessity and geography and back again. Who knows what the common ranch spoke, except ranch. This was prairie and cattle, wind and snow, cold and blazing heat. Not a place for overdone finery. Function. Poetry must be more than overlay. Poetry is what reality speaks if we can hear it and give it voice. What did my boyhood architecture speak? I only know, on glance, what the people gave to it, or lived in it. Happiness. The shape of the door, the old stuccoed garage, wooden shingles, plain additions and concrete porches without railing. All of this had a voice I could not hear. It just was. The empty yards of dirt, the scarce grass, the square street layout and drainages. It all had a voice and I still know it. I can even hear it. Happiness. I would say the happiness came from the people, and this is true, for I loved my family and they loved me. And I loved my teachers and friends, church and school, neighborhoods, paper route, ballfield. The good leaves any bad in the far background. Love, and happiness. Were others unhappy? Surely yes. But I wonder if happiness is really possessed. Or is it, rather, something deeper and beyond, something we can all know regardless of circumstance. Poetry, architecture, all of life might be hearing something deeper, something that encompasses — and gives birth to — all. I know my happiness came from family, but they were merely channels, poets, conveyors. They embodied it, unknowing. Medium matters, thunderous understatement that. All is medium in this world: the world itself. Poetry reveals what is, and the best and plainest and most beautiful leave us wondering, knowing the something, or Someone — it must be personal — gives voice from vastly beyond, yet deep within, our very soul.

Randy Huff and his wife lived for 5 years in Roanoke (Hollins) where they raised 2 sons. Randy served as Dean of Students at a Christian school and then worked in construction. For the last 9 years he has served as pastor of a church in North Pole, Alaska.

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