It’s National Poetry Month and You Haven’t Read a Single Poem Yet, Have You?

William Haskins · Apr 18, 2015

I don’t know many people who like poetry, though I do know a good number of people who read. Poetry remains rarefied and uninviting—or is the better word unappealing?—which is why I suspect National Poetry Month consistently passes uncelebrated and unacknowledged in the lives of most Americans. Poetry is the country music to those who might otherwise fancy themselves readers of everything, the form of writing almost all otherwise enthusiastic readers (of fiction and history and short stories and essays…) are excused for eschewing.

That isn’t to say people hate poetry. On the contrary, those who don’t read it often look upon the genre with benevolence, maybe even fond indulgence. When someone finds out I went to grad school to study poetry, they are almost inevitably charmed, if only with my precocious embrace of un-employability. What a cute, quaint, harmless pastime, their smiles imply, like I actually got a Masters in Floral Management.

Though it’s arguably the most persistent, adaptable, iconoclastic form of art, poetry has more unpleasant stereotypes to buck than any other. It’s been a few years since I was in grade school, but I remember the poetry taught then as written almost exclusively by long-dead British men and a handful of more recently dead white American men. Oh, and Emily Dickinson.

Those poets rhymed and used strict meter, which sounded silly and childish to me, and they concerned themselves with being clever, somber, or impenetrable on topics such as fleas, fences, and birds. Even if they were sometimes fun—“The Raven” is fun!—they didn’t move me. They didn’t feel vital or connected to life, and so I learned that poems were either trifles you could forget as soon as you left class, or boring, old codes you were saddled with cracking to pass a class.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/...try-month-and-you-havent-read-single-poem-yet

William Haskins · Apr 18, 2015

30 views and 2 votes.

if you people don't take a stand one way or the other, how in the hell are they supposed to know which of you to put in the FEMA camps?

BenPanced · Apr 18, 2015

CassandraW · Apr 18, 2015

Prediction: only those who've read and/or written at least one poem this month will respond to the poll.

However, any number of people will click to see if you've said anything potentially offensive in the poll.

juniper · Apr 18, 2015

I'm back to trying to memorize poetry at my job during slow times.

Kylabelle · Apr 18, 2015

juniper said:
I'm back to trying to memorize poetry at my job during slow times.

Good for you, Juniper. What poem(s) are you memorizing now? And how do you choose them?

William Haskins · Apr 18, 2015

CassandraW said:
However, any number of people will click to see if you've said anything potentially offensive in the poll.

i'm a one-dimensional character in the narrative of life.

MaryMumsy · Apr 18, 2015

It probably doesn't count, but I read "High Flight" at least once a month.

MM

William Haskins · Apr 18, 2015

of course it counts.

rugcat · Apr 18, 2015

Do the poems posted here at AW count?

And I would take some issue with the idea that long dead British men only wrote about academic, puerile, irrelevant things.

Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon did not write about trifles.

TS Eliot and Allen Ginsberg are not impenetrable, though I suppose some might think them so.

Yates wrote poems of both great beauty and profound thought.

The canon has been mocked and in some cases rightly so, but we should never sneer or turn up our noses at some of the great artists of the world simply because they had the good fortune to be born male and white.

William Haskins · Apr 18, 2015

rugcat said:
Do the poems posted here at AW count?

if they count to you as poems, certainly.

the original poster has already made their half of that assumption (i assume).

dolores haze · Apr 18, 2015

Kind of obsessed with Baudelaire at the moment, comparing different translations with the original French. I cannot seem to stop, though I really should be writing.

William Haskins · Apr 18, 2015

that is one hell of a wormhole.

good luck.

CassandraW · Apr 18, 2015

rugcat said:
Do the poems posted here at AW count?

They count double.

And I would take some issue with the idea that long dead British men only wrote about academic, puerile, irrelevant things.

Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon did not write about trifles.

TS Eliot and Allen Ginsberg are not impenetrable, though I suppose some might think them so.

Yates wrote poems of both great beauty and profound thought.

The canon has been mocked and in some cases rightly so, but we should never sneer or turn up our noses at some of the great artists of the world simply because they had the good fortune to be born male and white.

Agree with all of that.

On the impenetrable thing -- well, sure, there are some impenetrable poems out there, but I don't think most poetry is particularly difficult to understand. Alas, though, I think some people think poetry and impenetrability are synonymous -- they see a poem and assume they're going to miss something when they read it (just because it's a poem).

I don't think I've ever posted a poem here without getting a rep from at least one non-poet member saying something on the order of "I just wanted to say I liked your poem, but I don't want to comment in the thread because I don't know anything about poetry and I probably have it all wrong." I always want to say, "I'm sure you don't have it wrong! Comment away -- the poem won't bite!"

kuwisdelu · Apr 18, 2015

I read poetry last year.

This year I'm back to novels.

Maybe next year.

CassandraW · Apr 18, 2015

kuwisdelu said:
I read poetry last year.

This year I'm back to novels.

Maybe next year.

Traitor.

SomethingOrOther · Apr 18, 2015

kuwi, what have you read this year so far? I recently started Denis Johnson's Angels. It might end up being the GOAT. Holy fuck this is good.

kuwisdelu · Apr 18, 2015

SomethingOrOther said:
kuwi, what have you read this year so far?

That would be off-topic, if I weren't catching up on my PoC sci-fi authors, and I hadn't just started Nalo Hopkinson's Midnight Robber, and it didn't open with David Findlay's poem "Stolen".

MacAllister · Apr 18, 2015

Just in case people need somewhere to start...

William Haskins · Apr 18, 2015

thanks, mac!

SomethingOrOther · Apr 18, 2015

I used to love reading poetry aloud, but I haven't attempted to write a poem in years. Until now, that is. This is my WIP.

Shake,
your butt.
Wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle,
wiggle.
The pork chops are holograms,
the dog has a fake mustache
(roo? confused face).
Nothing is sacred.

So far, it's about post-Althusserian Marxism and the homogeneity of dialectic-consuming robots in a decaying society, but that just might go over your head unless you have an IQ of 300 like me.

CassandraW said:
I don't think I've ever posted a poem here without getting a rep from at least one non-poet member saying something on the order of "I just wanted to say I liked your poem, but I don't want to comment in the thread because I don't know anything about poetry and I probably have it all wrong." I always want to say, "I'm sure you don't have it wrong! Comment away -- the poem won't bite!"

I posted in your most recent thread.

Roxxsmom · Apr 19, 2015

Do song lyrics count as poetry?

Kylabelle · Apr 19, 2015

Roxxsmom said:
Do song lyrics count as poetry?

Of course they do.

I am noticing how many people are uneasy about whether or not what they enjoy as poetry is really "poetry", or about something along those lines. And Roxxsmom, hope you don't mind my taking your question as an example because it is surely a legitimate question, but I thought you would not mind.

There is a way people seem to fear being judged for their taste in poetry, for their reactions to it. Maybe this only comes from the way poetry is often taught in schools, I don't know. But it's a real shame because quite often, when people get past their various concerns about whether they're getting it right or not, they end up finding they can simply enjoy poems. Not all poems! No one on the planet enjoys all poems. Not every poem is for every reader.

The thing about old white male poets is one of the ways we try to understand this issue, of why more people don't engage with poetry easily, as easily as they seem to do in other countries and cultures.... Some of my fave poems are by old dead white men. But not all of them are.

Eh, I'll shut up now. I still want to know from Juniper what poem(s) she's memorizing.

Mr Flibble · Apr 19, 2015

I have Shweta's Triumph XVII Katha over my PC and I read it often

"I dare not bind my universe so tight
So I allow that fairies dance by night"

Filigree · Apr 19, 2015

My Kiwi boss put me on a search for Mervyn Peake's poetry, after we discussed 'Gormenghast'. http://www.mervynpeake.org/poet.html

Great stuff.

It’s National Poetry Month and You Haven’t Read a Single Poem Yet, Have You?

...

i've read at least one poem this month.

i've read more than one poem this month.

read one? hell, i've written one.

i've read and written multiple poems this month.

i haven't read a poem in ages.

i've never read a poem.

stop trying to sell people on poetry. it's not gonna happen.

other.

poet

poet

THE BLUEBERRY QUEEN OF HADES (he/him)

Always curious.

unaccounted for

poet

the original blond bombshell

poet

Lost in the Fog

poet

international guttersnipe

poet

Revolutionize the World

-

Revolutionize the World

'Twas but a dream of thee

poet

-

Beastly Fido

unaccounted for

They've been very bad, Mr Flibble

Mildly Disturbing