There was a time when I thought the greatest joy in life would be to be a café piano player. I remember watching such a player at a hotel lobby in San Francisco. He wore a white tuxedo and played a white grand piano, regal beside a large fountain. A jar sat on the piano, and every now and then a diner would walk up, slip some bills in the jar, and whisper to the pianist. He would nod, "no problem," and make a smooth transition to "The Shadow of Your Smile" or "They Can’t Take that Away from Me."

Alas, my own piano playing never got much beyond curving my fingers over the rubber ball my grandmother (a piano teacher) handed me, and managing a reasonably rhythmic rendition of "Long, Long Ago," a number rarely requested by patrons of upscale hotels. So my desire to make something beautiful—a desire I believe God plants in all of us—had to find other outlets.

Such as writing poetry. A poem is supposed to be a perfect constellation of language. Listen to (novelist) Joseph Conrad and see if your writer’s blood gets inspired:

It is only through complete, unswerving devotion to the perfect blending of form and substance; it is only through an unremitting never-discouraged care for the shape and ring of sentences that an approach can be made to plasticity, to colour, and that the light of magic suggestiveness may be brought to play for an evanescent instant over the commonplace surface of words: of the old old words, worn thin, defaced by ages of careless usage.

When I work on a poem I have the incredible opportunity to make something perfectly. I usually (or always) fall short of that goal, but that I can even imagine it and be stimulated to my best efforts by it, encourages my belief that there is a God who is perfection, and who created humans in his own image: as creative beings with a desire to make things which are beautiful and perfect.

A similar belief can be employed in making a cabinet, a gourmet dinner, dressing for a special occasion, arranging flowers, or writing a thank you note, as well as in the more traditional artistic endeavors. All of these activities give us the opportunity to make something beautiful, an intrinsically uplifting process, and share it with the community.

What do I mean by "beautiful"? Not "pretty." Rather, exquisitely crafted, showing mastery of the medium. And beyond this, according to the medium, a reverence and appreciation for human life and its possibilities, though tempered with an awareness of our fallen nature.

In my book, here are some exquisite contemporary poems: "Names of Horses," by Donald Hall; "Love Like Salt," by Lisel Mueller; "The Bad-Ass at Forty," by Philip Asaph (trust me); "Girl at Sewing Machine," by Mary Leader; "Chopsticks," by Esther Cameron, "The Curator," by Miller Williams; "Facing It," by Yusef Komunyakaa. Some of these poems may be available on the Web; the poems by Asaph and Cameron appear in the May 2000 issue of Poetry.

I suppose I will never play piano in a hotel lobby, but sitting at my keyboard, hunting around for the perfect sequence of words, I have my artistic contribution to make. And so do you.

Editor’s Note: Look forward to poetry by Scott Moncrieff in an upcoming issue of Spectrum.

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