I think the fear began in about fifth grade. Right off the top they said poetry was supposed to have "form." Even writing a tiny haiku became a wrestling match with a Claymation Cyclops for me. (I watched a lot of Sinbad.) We aren’t too cool for poetry; it’s the other way around. At least that’s the impression I took from public school. The fact that these feelings would remain into adulthood is ridiculous. We all have the right to poetry! How could I still think it’s for other people? Smarter people. What’s doubly confusing is I don’t have the same reservations when poetry is accompanied by music. Perhaps I feel that way because there is music all around us — it’s the wallpaper of our lives. It’s not considered precious in American culture unless a symphony is performing it.
I do know when a string of printed words busts my little dam and the tears spill over and I sponge them up with my T-shirt. I couldn’t give you that formula before it happens, it just hits me like a bat to the face. That’s a sweet, hot, amazing, embarrassing moment. It even makes me feel a little included, as if I have to be "ready for the poetry" for it to be happening.
I can’t choose which kind of poetry I like best. Sonnets? Prose? I don’t know the terminology. I just blurt out some fragmented gibberish into the vast, woodsy country of poetry. It freezes in midair. Here come some examples now . . .
What do these poets have in common? They don’t write sycophantic, roman-numeral-volumed postcards to God. They don’t get all "love-ity-love-love" either. I get the sense they imagine their audience and want to comfort them. They are so good at it they even have the ability to comfort us with scariness. Sadness too. I think that is a powerful magic. They don’t just write poetry either; they are playwrights and painters and singers and novelists.
How can we help them out? I guess we keep on needing them, even if it’s kind of a secret. If the poets handed out anonymous comment cards for us shy poetry lovers to fill out so they could get a better idea of what we needed, I would direct them to the Osbourne Brothers’ bluegrass classic, "Rocky Top." They say in two lines what poets and writers "Anna Karenina" themselves to death to convey, about a girl who’s "wild as a mink, but sweet as soda pop/I still dream about that." If those lines were written about me I could lie down and die. It is perfection. Uncool Perfection.