I’ve never been a fan of reading poetry. I’m too impatient to enjoy it. I want my fiction delivered up free of simile, metaphor, or symbol. I can handle it if these items are secondary to the story, but if they are presented in a manner which requires me to comprehend to appreciate the book, I just can’t do it.
But, that’s not to say I don’t enjoy live, oral poetry. For example, The Trouble with Poetry, by Billy Collins, the poet laureate of NY State, which I heard last weekend on A Prairie Home Companion. The poem has a line which encapsulates why I like it:
the trouble with poetry is
that it encourages the writing of more poetry,
And, it gets better from there. Remarks about stealing other authors’ work and tongue-in-cheek comments about the end of poetry entirely. It was particularly good because it was read by the author.
I should look for poetry books-on-tape. That might get me hooked.
“the trouble with poetry is
that it encourages the writing of more poetry, ”
That is so excellent.
Good poetry is a grand thing. Bad poetry is pretty bad though. And I think part of the problem is that people think that either:
a) every line has to be a traditional end-rhyme
b) that any free
verse simply needs
a carriage return in
unexpected places to be a poem
Like Outback, poetry can be “no rules, just right”. But it helps if you know some of the rules (in a loose sense of the word) so that you can flaunt them.