Happiness and Cheer

In Defense of Poetry

(This is not a poem). Just yesters, I ran into some friends of mine who asked me if I read the latest Sojourn. "Alan, you write poetry - did any of that stuff make sense to you? I mean, do poems really mean something to the people who write them?" This is not a unique sentiment. In fact, the majority of friend-types I run into say that poetry doesn't make sense. So what's it worth, anyways?   Chances are, if you don't like poetry, you won't even start this unless I make you think it's not a poem.  (It's not).  Plato says poets are liars, but I'll let you take that for what it's worth.  

This is what I'm trying to say:

Poetry is a lot

like coffee - once you acquire the taste

you enjoy it in ways others can't.

It takes some time, sometimes, but once the time is taken

you don't miss it - for what it's worth.  Still, 

at the same time, some people find it

so repulsive, they never want to like the taste.

Why learn to like something you don't already naturally?

That's how I am with coffee, so I

at least understand.

First, they say, try it with sugar

or cream or even honey.  Do 

people drink coffee with honey? I

would start drinking poetry with it.

This is what you read most of the time:

Bitter droplets of afternoon

drip down buttonholed

mugs of lava - where

do we come from said

the bee-keeper's wife, but she knew

his mustardseed skirt was too short 

for the making.  Baking.  

Caking.

I drink mine hot when I drink mine

but I don't drink mine when I do. just

listen. 

That's as much poetry as I'll inflict on you for the time being (remember, this is not a poem).  The most common question I get regards the meaning of poetry.  "Why do people like to use words nobody knows and flowery language no one understands - it's like they're trying to make things confusing?"  

Poetry requires a reader.  Just writing poetry does you no good - that's not the point of it.  If all I wanted to do was tell you something, I wouldn't need to do so with poetry.  I would just tell you.  Or write you.  But what if I had more in mind than telling you?  A good poem, in my books, is one that tells you something, but "tells it slant," as Ms. Dickinson would have it.  This is where some problems come in, of course.  Quite a few contemporary poets have gotten so caught up in the way of telling you something that they forget what it was they were trying to tell you.  Or maybe they didn't care about what they were telling you to begin with.  

Telling it slant is the real trick to poetry, though.  I need to make you understand what I'm telling you, but I need you to do some work to understand it.  That's part of the whole poetry thing.  If you have to do work to figure out something, it becomes more yours and less mine.  (This paragraph is mine). The more it's yours, the more I've done my job.  But if I just tell you, it was never yours to begin with.  Roses are Red will always be plagiarism - yet we always look for "the road less traveled" as if it were our own to take. 

What can I give you, though, to make it your own?  Think of it like a game, where you're the detective and I can give you clues.  What clues, you may ask?  The title, for one, should give you some direction on how to read the poem.  If the poem is called:  "A Fig or Two," you should ask yourself it that means the whole poem is a "fig" or if it represents a fig or it imitates a fig or it is describing a fig or...you get the point.  I can also enjamb lines or use binary oppositions or self-conscious gestures, but if you don't know what any of that means, don't worry.  Poetry is not only for the elite.  I can also use capitalization techniques and line-breaks and puns and dashes and colloquialisms and parentheticals (and the like) to give you direction. 

As a poet, I can't give you the destination, but I'll at least offer some road-signs.

This was not a poem. (That 

was a poem).

       See?

When I Were a Dragon

I realize now

that the poem I gave you

was incomplete.  I forgot to mention 

the cold and the fog 

          you see spackling out your mouth

when it comes down upon

the sky.  Clearly

I meant to include that bit but 

you know how it is you 

get on the train and think

you'll do this and that when you get there

but not here.  

                   Here is only a moment

but moments are all so

        I'm looking 

at it now and remembering.