Once I started to get poems published, my grandmother would ask to see a poem. Always she’d say: That’s not poetry: it doesn’t rhyme.
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People say this: Now that’s poetry. Think Crocodile Dundee: That’s not poetry. Now that’s poetry.
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Are we beset with false poetry, pretend poetry, spurious poetry? Do we dream of a poetry FDA to protect us from the color of rusted nails?
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Introduced at a party as a poet, one question follows more readily than any other: Really? What kind of poetry do you write?
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Narrative, lyric, epic, topographical, informatic, aleatory, elliptical…
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I see Jericho Brown in the Midway airport where he tells me No one writes narrative poetry anymore!
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Sometimes we can get down to defining their terms. If by “narrative” you mean…
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I tried to explain to my grandmother assonance, internal rhyme, mosaic rhyme, but she wasn’t buying it. For her, there was only one kind of rhyme.
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In the Metropolitan Museum of Art, my wife and I linger over a Jackson Pollock painting. A family strolls by, the father proclaiming My four year old could do this!
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Poetry is beyond. Poetry is can’t.
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The Facts of Life, Season 1, Episode 6, Blair reads an Emily Dickinson poem. Tootie replies: That must be poetry: I didn’t understand a word.
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The basketball player is poetry in motion.
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The bookseller describes a favorite book on the public radio as almost poetry, as if to say Beautiful, but not frightening: you can read this.
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One graduate student asks another graduate student Who are you reading? and in response to the answer says just Oh…
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The birds ask the bat, What are you? The beasts ask the bat, What are you? Aesop says, “He that is neither one thing nor the other has no friends.”
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In the movie Sideways, the playboy character is trying to cheer the writer character: “That’s beautiful… I couldn’t write that.” The writer replies: “Neither could I. I think it’s Bukowski.”
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The student closes his copy of Best American Poetry 2010 and says That’s not poetry. He clobbers the BAP with a volume of Bukowski and says Now that’s poetry.
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What kind of poetry is it? we ask, we poets even, asking Should I bother to read it?
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Oh, he’s a _____ poet. Oh, she’s a ____ poet.
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I sit on a panel with three other serious poets. One of them avers But prose poetry isn’t really even poetry…
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All the poetry placards on the buses in Denver now present poems written by teenagers or pre-teens.
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My airplane seatmate says My daughter writes poetry. I ask how old she is. Nine.
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On another flight, the seatmate says I’m glad I didn’t know you were a poet before. I would have been afraid to talk to you.
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That must be poetry, Tootie says. I didn’t understand a word.