My Needs for Poetry

So, my needs for poetry are not complicated. First, I'd like there to be poetry, and I'm willing to do it myself. Then, I want the language to jump and sparkle if it can--tell me something I haven't heard before, phrase it in an unusual way, and use words like "scantling" and "half-holing" and "full-wide." Vivid details are always appreciated. Furthermore, I am ensorcelled by enjambment, which is taking sentences and making them run through poetic verses including from line to line, and in some cases even from stanza to stanza--extra fancy for the holiday. Lastly, I always enjoy having readers, and especially if they can give me some of their reactions and how the whole thing made them feel. I'm trying to perform literal word magic, but it doesn't pay to make the effort too visible to civilians--but I will say that doing this sort of thing is a great deal easier if you've been writing for years and years, and went to school with top-of-the-line and excellent teachers precisely for writing (such as the incomparable Mekeel

McBride at UNH, as well as the singular Charles Simic), and if you read omnivorously and consume all sorts of language from military history to economics to anthropomorphic speculation to, yes, poetry and songs and chants—and all kinds of fiction. Then try to be casual. Nothing too flashy. Don’t make too big a deal of it. Nothing up my sleeve...Kaboom! Maybe I can pull Atlantis out of a tea cup! And maybe not. It’s tricky. 

I remember asking a younger person what they were listening to, and if they had any favorites, and their striking answer was “Not really. I just want them to mean it.” This could just as easily apply to poetry and painting and novels and movies and almost any artistic endeavor—Lordy, just mean it. This doesn’t mean you can’t fool around as you go, and Robert Frost famously said he was never more serious than when he was joking, after all. A sly sense of humor is often just what something needs to perfect its effects and refine its affects, so to speak. Some chicanery and “double Dutch” often leavens the loaf, causing our spirits to rise with the sourdough of our immortal souls, covered and placed in a cool spot to rise, and rise, and rise again. Because poetry can help us to expand and grow, can lengthen our thoughts and deepen our understanding, and if it doesn’t offer all the bells and whistles we have come to expect from self-help and advice writings (“Top ten reasons you keep screwing everything up!”), it does offer us a kindly hand when we are in a hole, and a gentle laugh when things are fraught, not to mention penetrating insight into matters that we didn’t realize were so important until the poet set them spinning like plates on sticks above our heads. —2024, in NH.