unsatisfactory

if you read my post of the last, then you know it answers nothing. poetry deals in contradiction: what is always true is also never true. in this way, poetry is like every kind of art, including cave drawings - your diary - and the last documentary you saw.

before i get all existentialist up in there, i won't. except to say that my last post could be true {all that stuff about "getting it"} a few times out of 1,000. and that a poem contains infinitely more to love than what it may teach. i wouldn't read a poem exclusively to learn something any more than i would eat a good meal just for the nourishment of it.

richard gently nudged me to address the excellent questions, what is a poem? and, how can i tell when i'm reading one? and that's how you can tell who the teacher is in the family.

coincidentally my three year-old woke me up this morning by yelling through the house, "MOM! LISTEN TO MY WORDS!", which seems like a good place to start.

thanks for having questions; i'm going to keep hovering around some answers, trying to zero in. {i keep visualizing the giant axe dangling from the ceiling of the art building rotunda where the staff of my college's student review magazine held editorial meetings. i wonder if i'm in more or less danger now, straddling california's fault line.} so much to ponder.

but...i have to go now because the person who shares a room with me needs to sleep and i don't want to type in his ear {though ideally everyone should be wearing earplugs}. i'll think on these questions until another opportunity to write opens up. meanwhile, some words from Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz, to my earlier point:

"poetry that speaks to the enduring and irreversible coordinates of human fate---love, striving, fear of pain, hope, the fleeting nature of things, and death---leads us to believe that the poet is one of us, and shares in that fate.... But it would not be quite right to claim that its theme is therefore an eternal human nature, for as our consciousness changes, we humans try to confront ultimate things in new and different ways."

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for those wanting to start reading a poem here and there, you might enjoy these poets (you can find them online at poets.org, at any largish book store, or of course at the lib'ary): - naomi shihab nye - billy collins - li-young lee - james tate - gary snyder - jorie graham. i think it's best to have the book in your hand but online is okay. anthologies are very nice too because you can browse the most popular poems by selected poets until you find something that, you know, hurts so good.

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finally, of course, a poem (another by wislawa szymborska):

Some Like Poetry

Some--
not all, that is.
Not even the majority of all, but the minority.
Not counting school, where one must,
or the poets themselves,
there'd be maybe two such people in a thousand.

Like--
but one also likes chicken-noodle soup,
one likes compliments and the color blue,
one likes an old scarf,
one likes to prove one's point,
one likes to pet a dog.

Poetry--
but what sort of thing is poetry?
Many a shaky answer
has been given to this question.
But I do not know and do not know and hold on to it,
as to a saving bannister.