Poetry

For a few weeks every semester, I get to teach poetry. I used to dread every encounter with the genre, from grade school onward. I have given a lot of thought to this, and I've pretty much determined what happened...

As a young child I loved word play. I would toss around rhymes just to hear them bounce off my tongue. I loved reading playful books with poetic verse that really rocked the house. I liked writing witty little ditties that made me feel good, for I was able to mesh together rhymes into statements, stories, etc.

Then, somewhere in middle school, I think, I was introduced to Poetry (note, with a capital P), and then all the joy and playfulness was siphoned away, replaced by scansion of lines, deeper Meaning, allusions to literary things I did not know (and thus, being ignorant, I felt stupid). All through school thereafter Poetry waggled a finger in my face (or more accurately, the teachers delivering it) and I was made to feel ever-more ill-prepared and uninformed. I was no match for Poetry, as it was shared.

Sometime in graduate school a light went on, when I was reading ee cummings. I hated him with a passion, for his work seemed the most opaque, cryptic, and challenging of all Poetry. Then I listened to it. Then I just played along with him and his words. I was re-introduced to poetry at play, and then the tidal flood of all that was good clean fun came washing back over me.

I have since learned to appreciate poetry for its potency, for its life and vitality. I can enjoy a string of words, a bandwith of images, a bevy of symbols....I can just roll a word around on the tongue like someone else might a fine wine, and savor the many flavors of it. (In class last week, I likened this to Skittles, encouraging them to "taste the rainbow" of poetry.)

I confess I don't always "get it." There are many (probably most) poems I encounter that are more dense than I am, more unyielding to me (unless I am willing to research, read the footnotes, really work at it). You know what, though? That's okay with me. If I want it enough, I can penetrate any poem, even a translation, given time and energy.

What I really love, however, is simply wordsmith-ing and spoken word. I love poetry that is pyrotechnic. I groove on language for its sound and substance.

I hope I don't scare away any of my students when I go off on a word's 'feel' or texture. I hope they don't get the impression that I'm right or they're ignorant. Instead, I hope just a few of them leave class for the day listening to the euphony of a word, like diarrhea or mammogram.