Owning Poetry
April’s been National Poetry Month. That announcement probably won’t get you Googling the nearest open mike for rhymes and rhetoric. Poets and poetry exist, but let’s face it, like issues around sex, most polite people like to keep our poetic preferences private. Telling someone you are into poetry is like admitting you are a NPR listener at a Republican fundraising BBQ. You are allowed some brisket, but everyone knows you can’t handle hot sauce.
Ok, closet and uncloseted poets, I know you all are saying you can handle hot sauce but don’t see why it should make a difference. I ask why you all think you need a month to yourselves? Poetry is pretty much a year round activity right? Is poetry somehow repressed and needs to be given its own month, like Black History month? Was a poem ever enslaved and murdered for being a sonnet? (Well, other than in a college writer’s workshop.) Poetry is ubiquitous not subjugated.
Back when I worked a Wente Scout Reservation, Conrad Amis (International Volunteer) would paste William Carlos Williams poems to bathroom walls. So there I (and most staff members) would be sitting or standing, reading poetry at the most inappropriate time. This would conjure up post collegiate poetry recall syndrome. This condition was a direct result of forced feeding of E.E. Cummings and William Carlos Williams to me by Professor Zelda Boyd of Cal State East Bay for a whole quarter. Sure, say it was only a short episode in my life but, it was in my formative vulnerable years, when my brain was quite malleable. The combination of Conrad’s and Zelda’s poetry crimes has made impossible for me to look at the “Women” sign on a public bathroom without regurgitating the line:”Women and Men, both little and small, cared for anyone none at all” from Cumming’s poem “Anyone lived in a pretty how town.”
Its bad enough poetry sneaks into private places, but does it need to hang out at work and politics too? Working in the Bay Area high tech industry if you listen to programmers: software engineering is poetry. They are typing out recitations that are starting a new artistic movement. –and by the way, they should be paid for their Picasso’s or Neruda’s. We know poetry is high art, because when we see a good sculpture, ballet, or super slick smart phone what do we compare it too: poetry. When President Lincoln looked for a justification for the slaughter of the Civil War, what did he turn to: poetry? Following his example when our churches leaders need to console motivate us at funerals and weddings, what do they use? Yeah, you got it, poetry. Why because the Bible and Koran are written in poetry. Everyone and everything turns to verse because as President John Adams, said in a letter once to his teenage son, John Quincy, while away on a congressional trip, “With a poet in your pocket, you will never feel alone.” Poetry is our constant companion. Like a life partner we are in bed with it, though at a party where we think we can pick up a song or something, we are hoping to deny a relationship with poetry temporarily. Is poetry month like a date night we have with our life partner because we want to create freshness to a relationship we don’t intend leaving?
For the record, I don't have not trouble with poetry. Just pass the hot sauce. We can skip the dedicated month.
Ok, closet and uncloseted poets, I know you all are saying you can handle hot sauce but don’t see why it should make a difference. I ask why you all think you need a month to yourselves? Poetry is pretty much a year round activity right? Is poetry somehow repressed and needs to be given its own month, like Black History month? Was a poem ever enslaved and murdered for being a sonnet? (Well, other than in a college writer’s workshop.) Poetry is ubiquitous not subjugated.
Back when I worked a Wente Scout Reservation, Conrad Amis (International Volunteer) would paste William Carlos Williams poems to bathroom walls. So there I (and most staff members) would be sitting or standing, reading poetry at the most inappropriate time. This would conjure up post collegiate poetry recall syndrome. This condition was a direct result of forced feeding of E.E. Cummings and William Carlos Williams to me by Professor Zelda Boyd of Cal State East Bay for a whole quarter. Sure, say it was only a short episode in my life but, it was in my formative vulnerable years, when my brain was quite malleable. The combination of Conrad’s and Zelda’s poetry crimes has made impossible for me to look at the “Women” sign on a public bathroom without regurgitating the line:”Women and Men, both little and small, cared for anyone none at all” from Cumming’s poem “Anyone lived in a pretty how town.”
Its bad enough poetry sneaks into private places, but does it need to hang out at work and politics too? Working in the Bay Area high tech industry if you listen to programmers: software engineering is poetry. They are typing out recitations that are starting a new artistic movement. –and by the way, they should be paid for their Picasso’s or Neruda’s. We know poetry is high art, because when we see a good sculpture, ballet, or super slick smart phone what do we compare it too: poetry. When President Lincoln looked for a justification for the slaughter of the Civil War, what did he turn to: poetry? Following his example when our churches leaders need to console motivate us at funerals and weddings, what do they use? Yeah, you got it, poetry. Why because the Bible and Koran are written in poetry. Everyone and everything turns to verse because as President John Adams, said in a letter once to his teenage son, John Quincy, while away on a congressional trip, “With a poet in your pocket, you will never feel alone.” Poetry is our constant companion. Like a life partner we are in bed with it, though at a party where we think we can pick up a song or something, we are hoping to deny a relationship with poetry temporarily. Is poetry month like a date night we have with our life partner because we want to create freshness to a relationship we don’t intend leaving?
For the record, I don't have not trouble with poetry. Just pass the hot sauce. We can skip the dedicated month.
posted by Stan at 10:54 AM
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