Poetry is What / Happens When Nothing Else / Can

Michelle Kerns may very well be a lovely woman.  I have never met her, never knew her name before tonight in fact, but I can tell you after a little internet sleuthing that she is a fan of Douglas Adams as was evidenced by the note in her bio that she 'knows where her towel is.'  [I have just realized that the fact that I get that reference may say something about me, but I am not a fan, I assure you, I just happen to know a number of people obsessed with him and well, anyway, this is about Michelle and not me.]  She also does not know that Yeats' name has an 's' at the end of it, referring to him as 'Mr. Yeat,' and she wrote an article that I am quite certain smacks of exactly what is wrong with the world.  Again, she may be lovely, but on this one she's just wrong.


Her article, How to Overcome Poetry Phobia: A 3 Step Rehabilitation Plan for Those Adverse to Verse, starts with the assumption that the only people who like poetry are college aged beret-wearing posers studying it now or 30-40ish beret-wearing posers who used to study it.  I should have stopped reading right there, but I liked the coquettish upward glance from beneath the glasses slipping down her nose in her profile picture, so I kept going.  She goes on to suggest that a love of poetry is murdered in school by those damned professors who want--egads--to make students think about what they read.  This was her own experience and, as a friend told me recently, many people have trouble looking past their own experiences when they try to explain something, so Michelle, it appears, is at home in that sea of many.


I don't want to play by play her article, if you want to read it, do.  But I will briefly outline her three step plan so as to get to the point that I really do have:


Step 1) Read a basic overview of great poetry.  The problem here is that people 'adverse to verse' probably wouldn't know a good basic overview from a bad one.  She suggests Camille Paglia's Break, Blow, Burn which, apparently, includes 43 poems and ends with the lyrics to Joni Mitchell's "Woostock." I don't dislike Ms. Paglia or Ms. Mitchell, but when I think of a basic overview of great poetry, neither one of their names would come up on my list.  And, since I'm not 'adverse to verse,' let's just assume I know what I'm talking about.  


Step 2)  Listen to a quality recording of poetry readings, preferably with the poets themselves as the readers.  On this point, I agree with Ms. Kerns.  There really is no better way to appreciate the way a poet meant for something to sound than to hear it in her voice.  Where she takes a breath, which lines she runs together, the way she wants the words to crush or separate can all be heard and felt more strongly when you hear her do the reading.  I won't knock her for this one, it's sound advice.


Step 3) If you're still with me, this is where that point I had becomes clear.  Learn not to avoid poems that you think you won't like (or because you hated them passionately the first time you read them).  The premise of this is great: don't be closed minded.  Read everything and then decide what you like, let the poem speak for itself.  But--and in the world of 'buts' this is a pretty big one--I think it is perfectly alright for people to stay away from poems they think they won't like because I think it is perfectly alright for people to stay away from poetry.  


There are those who will want to disembowel me for that one, but hear me out.  Just like college and drug use and the music of Neil Diamond, poetry just isn't for everyone.  Sure, you can puff on poetry when it's passed to you, but don't bogart that stanza unless you plan to inhale.  Maybe I am an elitist when it comes to poetry, but I think it should belong to the people who want to know it, have to read it, burn for it.  Ms. Kerns' article suggests that it is as easy to learn and love as gardening and changing your oil yourself (two things, incidentally, I neither wish to learn nor plan on ever loving).  My argument is that it isn't easy because it isn't supposed to be.


Charles Bukowski, a man I love more and more with each new fact I learn or poem I read, published extensively and while he may be more accessible than say, Keats or Ammons, even he isn't for everybody.  The following poem (which appears in his book The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain) speaks to what poetry is.  His summation requires an understanding that may only be available to those for whom verse is more about conversion (of the self, of the soul) and less about the aversion and I guess I'm just suggesting that  Ms. Kerns seems keen on curing something that may, in fact, not be a disease at all.  


Those of us who count ourselves converted may be the sickest ones, but we won't stop until we're gorged and sluggish, bellies full of the words that so many don't understand.


Writing, Charles Bukowski 

you begin to smile
all up and down
inside
as the words jump
from your fingers
and onto the keys
and it's like a
circus  dream
you're the clown, the lion tamer,
you’re the tiger,
you’re yourself
as
the words leap
through hoops of fire,
do triple somersaults
from trapeze to
trapeze, then
embrace the
Elephant Man
as
the poems keep coming,
one by one
they slip to
the floor,
it's going hot and good;
the hours rush past
and then
you’re finished,
move toward the bedroom,
throw yourself upon the bed
and sleep your righteous sleep
here on earth,
life is perfect at last.

poetry is what happens
when nothing else
can.