The Knife Inside in Everyday Ramblings

I want to address the line in my previous post about being a real poet that my have brought you up short.

I didn’t say this to her, the woman I am working with. I just thought it. I would like to write a little about that today.

The line, the edge, the bite was not meant for her. It was meant for me. It comes from a deep well of exasperation and insecurity. I am at the point these days where when someone tells me they write poetry I want to say, “I’m sorry.”

Honestly, I think of the drive to write poems, and particularly the drive to write strong poems with something useful and good to say as an affliction, a gift that in this culture, in America, if it is genuine, manifests as an affliction.

When I go to readings where almost the whole audience self-identifies as poets I do feel sad for them all.

It is a completely crazy thing to do.

Pretty much everybody out in the rest of our world is made uncomfortable by it, because they don’t understand it, (and think they should) or compare what one does with the very few breakthrough poets that are popular like Mary Oliver or Billy Collins.

Or the poet has followed the narrow rocky academic path to publication and has that outside recognition of a University press even they often don’t have anything interesting to say.

One of the most well known and well respected local poets is so arrogant that he has absolutely no feel that his endless self-indulgent lines are boring as all get out.

Another one drapes his lines across us like we were furniture that should feel blessed to receive his choice of covering.

There are those that like to shock, that live to shock, and get attention any kind of attention.

I have put up with so much crap, such bad behavior, such boredom wrapped in heightened poignant language, so much bad poetry over the years I think I am coming to the end of my rope.

They are folks that have sustained terrible losses and know no other way to express that loss in what they think of must be poetry. I feel a great deal of tenderness towards them and want to get away as fast as possible.

Mr. Fine China chose to literally ignore this part of my life. Hands over his ears, la, la, la, la…

There is no excuse for the mean thing I thought when this interesting well-traveled woman told me that she writes poetry too.

But there is a reason.

And after I shared the thought with you last night I did what I needed to all along and wrote a poem, which you can find here.

Last updated September 02, 2014