I was doing a random, nerdy search online today. I discovered this, became fascinated, and wrote a little something about it. This is completely off the cuff, by the way. What do you think is missing from this list of themes? What would you include? Inquiring minds want to know.
Prose Poem
By Katy Jacob
Poetry Themes as Identified on Poets.org:
Aging, animals, anniversaries, parenting, birthdays, breakups, childhood, Chaunukah, autumn, body, Christmas, revolution, daughters, Halloween, enemies, farewell, fathers, friendship, funerals, weather, graduation, summer, aliens, space, home, clothing, illness, love, shoes, mother, school, nature, underworld, lust, sons, sports, grief, war, weddings, winter, work, New Year’s, teaching, writing, scary, movies, romance, heartache, politics, pockets, spring, libraries, flowers, gardens, Thanksgiving, carpe diem, dreams, drinking, reading, birds, turmoil, gratitude, for teens, sharks, vampires, landscapes, night, maidens, lanes, music, eating, fruit, divorce, pets, dogs, cats, tragedy, high school, patience, life, horses, fish, old age, loneliness, ambition, memories, instruments, snow, innocence, New York, vacations, buildings, monkeys, storms, mourning, language, whales, survival, boats, America, history, theft, beginnings, daffodils, roses, jazz, cities, flight, travel, regret, masks, faces, rebellion, lunch, breakfast, dinner, creation, listening, Apocalypse, hands, feet, blood, thought, bedrooms, kitchens, wind, gender, miracles, beauty, objects, breath, voice, Nativity, skin, self, identity, maps, mountains, rivers, oceans, ancestry, future, heroes, infidelity, vanity, luck, anger, time, cooking, sun, earth, moon, loss, desire, past, plants, dance, afterlife, moving, deer, Freud, trees, Snow White, Jews, Love Today, hair, brothers, happiness, drugs, suburbia, beach, ghosts, pacifism, myth, science, dead fathers, LGBTQ, silence, For Mom
These themes just beg for themes of their own:
Things That Seem Obvious:
It is interesting how weather places itself right in between funerals and graduations.
Mourning and storms are not so different after all.
High school is, indeed, a tragedy on some level.
Old age involves loneliness and fish.
America was built on a history of theft.
Rebellion is not so far apart from eating lunch.
Heroes are not always faithful.
Pacifism is a myth.
Mothers might find themselves caught between shoes and school, with no one taking either seriously enough.
Things That Are Worth Questioning
Are daughters bound to be tied up with revolution and sons with war?
Does Freud deserve his own category?
Are there no other important holidays?
Why are some animals more equal than others?
There are really only 42 poems about lust?
Is this all there is? What about color, envy, clouds, healing, hunger, cars, stoicism, laughter, trees, games, furniture, technology, annihilation, exhilaration, adulthood, medicine, warm, cold, absence, presence, seasons, sleep, oppression, freedom, and the birth and death that sit on the other sides of life?
Things That are Important to Consider
People write poems about pockets and turmoil in equal measure.
There are enough poems in someone’s database to warrant numerous categories.
Loss and desire might just be part of the past, or at least its close cousins.
New York sits next to innocence, which calls the whole pattern into question.
In the end, we might all just wish to move away from it all, by dancing into the afterlife, embedded in silence, asking For our Mothers.
