WHY I HAVE WRITTEN POETRY FOR MORE THAN 55 YEARS 1970–2026 | 8,000+ Poems

A. A Metaphysical Foundation

I consider poetry to be a metaphysical language: a way of expressing the relationship between inner awareness and lived physical experience.

For many years I have described physical life as the Earth Dreamscape—the visible, changing world in which human beings live, struggle, love, suffer, and pass away. It appears solid and permanent, yet everything within it changes. In contrast, I understand the spiritual dimension as foundational, enduring, and not limited by ordinary concepts of time and space.

This distinction has shaped my writing from the beginning. My poems often arise from the tension between what is immediately experienced and what seems to lie behind it. A rose, a death, a childhood memory, a passing glance, a moment of beauty, a political event, an act of cruelty, or an unexpected peace—each may be experienced on more than one level at once.

My personal focus has long been increasing the level of peace in the world human society. That commitment informs everything I do. It is not separate from poetry, but one of the ways poetry finds direction. I do not see poetry as escape from reality. I see it as a way of perceiving reality more deeply.

For this reason, I do not regard myself as scattered, even though my work extends across poetry, art, spirituality, law, politics, and public questions. The common thread is consistent: I am always asking how human beings may see more clearly, live more consciously, and increase the level of peace in the world they share.

My poetry reflects this effort. It is not offered as doctrine, and it belongs to no institution. It is the record of one person repeatedly trying to connect the visible world with the deeper meanings that move within it.

B. The Influence of Poetry on My Life Poetry did not enter my life through formal literary training. It entered through experience, memory, and certain decisive moments.

As a child, I was struck early by the fact of death. That awareness did not leave me. It pushed me toward questions that did not have easy answers and became one of the first motivations behind my lifelong search for meaning.

I was also influenced early by the poetic language of scripture, especially the Psalms and the sayings of Jesus. Later, in high school, Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost were important to me in different ways. Dickinson suggested that a poem could be brief, direct, and intimate. Frost suggested that a life could be shaped by choosing one’s own path. Both insights stayed with me.

On October 11, 1970, the night before reporting for military service, I wrote my first poem. I have never stopped.

From that point on, poetry became not an occasional activity, but a continuing part of life. It was never something I did only for publication, reputation, or money. It became a way of observing, processing, and recording experience.

Over the years, other writers and texts also influenced me. Biblical language, metaphysical thought, sacred literature, Zen, the Tao, haiku, and poetry from many traditions all widened my sense of what poetry could do. I gradually came to see that poetry was not simply literary expression. It was also a form of attention.

Life itself reinforced that understanding. Work, family, spiritual searching, conflict, endurance, love, disappointment, discipline, solitude, and public struggle all became part of the reservoir from which poems emerged. The poems were not written after life. They were written during it.

That is one reason the work has continued for so long. Poetry has not been separate from my life. In many ways, it has been one of the main ways I have lived it consciously.

C. What Is a Poet?

A poet is someone who sees more than surface appearance.

A poet looks at the visible world, but does not stop there. Something in the object, event, person, or moment suggests a deeper meaning, and the poet responds to that perception through language.

This language does not have to follow a single form. It may be expansive or compressed, lyrical or plain, structured or free. Over time, each poet develops a natural voice—a pattern of seeing and saying that belongs to that life and no other.

I have come to believe that long practice matters. Anyone who works honestly in one form for decades will develop a signature that cannot be duplicated. Others may imitate aspects of it, but they cannot reproduce the life from which it came.

For me, writing poetry has become a natural act. A perception arrives, and I write it down. The process is often quick. I do not build poems mechanically. I record them as they come. Later I may revisit the work, but the essential act is immediate.

I do not remember many of my poems once they are written. When I reopen a book and read them, I often encounter them almost as a reader would. That has taught me to respect the moment of creation without clinging to it.

What matters most to me is not literary status, but the act itself: the arrival of a thought, the writing of the poem, the preservation of that moment, and the possibility that it may carry something meaningful to another person later.

Poetry, in this sense, is both deeply personal and strangely independent. Once written, it has its own life.

If I were to give one simple encouragement to anyone who feels drawn to poetry, it would be this: write when the moment comes. Do not push it away. Record it. Honor it. Then move on and continue living.

Dr John WorldPeace JD