Happy Poem In Your Pocket Day!!

April 29th is national Poem In Your Pocket Day. A strange, yet fun excuse to carry bits of paper around with you, along with fuzz and pennies. I'll be carrying the poem "Day of Foreboding" by Stanley Kunitz, because it's pretty short, and I like short poems, especially when I'm trying to convince random people to read from scraps I'm pulling from my pockets. I love this poem because the title is ridiculously clever. But also because when I read this poem, I feel anything but foreboding. The irony strikes me like, well, hot iron. The first line reads "Great events are about to happen." It makes me think of Mr. Ollivander in Harry Potter, which is bizarre, I know. But he made a point of explaining that great deeds can still be terrible deeds. Is that what Kunitz is saying? Are great events terrible events? Should we be scared of what's coming? Mid-poem, Kunitz does do something frightening; he alludes to enormous flocks or birds, and if that doesn't frighten you, go watch some Hitchcock films and get back to me. The poem ends with the speaker "waiting for the uncertain signal to resume a long march." Maybe I'm too excited about Poem In Your Pocket Day to pick up on the foreboding, or maybe I'm just so darn optimistic, I've really flown the coop, but this poem gives me chills and goose pimples of the good kind. Like I don't care if what's coming is good or bad, just bring it on. The anxiety of waiting is intense, though the poem is so very short (nine lines). This poem is a thriller, a small gift from me to you. Look it up.

You'll Get A Hernia!

"-You think about a poem too much.
Like Spanish moss,
it starts killing the tree!"

Brenda Hillman's first stanza from the poem "Visiting Creature" (above) reminds me of one of the most important things to remember when reading a poem. Don't over-think it. Don't give yourself a hernia. I must admit, with some embarrassment, that I don't really understand half of what Hillman writes about in her poems from the books Bright Existence and Death Tractates (which includes the above-mentioned poem). These books are ambitious works that ask big questions and ponder gnostic ideas. And grief, a whole lot of grief, especially in Death Tractates, which is about the death of Hillman's good friend. Yet, I'm never frustrated, never confused. Instead, I'm left with a sense of mystery and wonder, of sadness and grief. A great poem leaves you with emotion. If you're scratching your head, it may have missed its mark. But if it makes you think, makes you adapt it to your own life and understanding, makes you look at it from your perspective, well, it's done its job. I find it interesting that Hillman mentions this in her own work. I wonder if she had received criticisms about her work being inaccessible, and I laugh, knowing that we've all faced this obstacle. Sometimes people try too hard to understand where we're coming from, instead of listening and absorbing whatever we throw their way. So next time you screw up your face with wonder at some strange poem, relax. Give that poem a chance to grow into you.

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/1442

Welcome

Welcome to Let's Talk About Poetry! The purpose of this site is to celebrate poetry. You'd think we could all agree on the basics of what poetry entails. For instance, we can probably all agree that poetry is a bunch of words on a page, or at least one word on a page, or spoken out loud... Well, then again, maybe not. There are books galore on the craft of poetry, the technical aspects of poetry, the way to analyze a poem from a literary perspective. We're not interested in that here. Unless we are. Our number one goal is to take the fear out of reading poems. Our number two goal is to then roll around in the poems and get cuddly. There are no rules here. We may talk about a sunset we saw over the canal that made our hearts sing, and how just seeing something beautiful is the beginning of poem that has not yet been written. Maybe it never will be. Or we may talk about a totally famous poem that makes us __________ (insert emotion here, i.e. mad, happy, sad) or a totally no-name poem that also makes us feel some sort of strong emotion. We may ponder, and we may form conclusions. But never, never will we pretend we know everything. That's a promise. Please feel free to share your comments and thoughts, as long as they are free of bigotry. And please give credit where credit is due. Always name the poet and title of any piece you reference. Thanks, and we look forward to talking poetry with you!