It’s funny to me, in my advanced age, how I would write so much poetry in my younger days, yet I never actually read any poetry. I still find myself unwilling and – if we’re being gracious – functionally unable to read poetry.
It’s physically uncomfortable. Once I see verse on the page, my mind shifts into a “this is serious art, and you need to pay attention to the pictures they’re drawing.” I go into the endeavor the hard way and bail out.
But the poetry of my twenties? That was just me playing with word shapes and conceptual reverberations. Finding the rhythm in ideas. Trying to express things with big-brain patterns. Shortcutting prosaic sequences with orthogonal parallel images. Artistic masturbation, really.
I’m subscribed to some literary journals, and I feel sheepish when I flip past someone’s poem. I know it’s supposed to be good, or it never would have made the editorial selection. But in reading, I can’t find a handhold to climb its stanzas. I flail against the rocks, nails chipping, dust falling into my face. I drop the chalk bag, unclip from the belay, and go home. I tried, friend. Really, I tried.
Likes