prev ipso facto next
2001-02-12 | 16:10:35

I know I'm not a poet. I have no tendency toward compression, which is the fundamental characteristic of poetry. I don't know how to do compression, except by leaving things out:

CMPRSSHN.

But I'm pretty sure that's not the correct approach.

Still, taking all that into account, why shouldn't I try to write poetry? It's a challenge. If I end up with a bunch of bad poems, so what? No harm done. I wrote some truly dreadful poems as a teenager--really, really bad. I'm sure I can do better than that now (which is more than you could say about some people).

In college, I took a modern poetry survey course with Robert Hass, and during the course he asked us to write two poems. We all had to go see him in office hours to discuss our poems. This struck me as odd, but I was secretly pleased with my poems, and hoped that Hass would have something positive to say. I knew they were not phenomenal poems, but they were, in my opinion, competent, which came as a bit of a surprise.

But Hass didn't have anything nice to say. He did a standard workshop critique of my sub-par poems, bored, and sent me on my way. Which made me feel horrible. After all, this was a survey course, not a poetry workshop. These were the only two poems I had written as an adult. It's not like I asked him, Mr. Famous Poet, to pleasepleaseplease look at my precious poems and give me your brutally honest opinion. No--I was obligated to write them, never having called myself a poet, and then made to feel inadequate because they didn't measure up to Wallace Stevens and Ezra Pound. When I left his office, I felt so mortified that I swore I would never write another poem again.

But ten years later I think it's time to say, Fuck you, Robert Hass; I don't like your poems, either, and besides, I caught you blatantly plagiarizing a biography of Robinson Jeffers (a paperback with a cardboard cover that I read in the Moffitt undergraduate library) when you wrote your introduction to the Jeffers's collection you edited. Bad form, Mr. Hass! I will write my poems and sure, I will never be poet laureate but I can probably get some published. So why not? Tens of thousands of Americans do it, so why shouldn't I? Big deal, one old man made me feel embarrassed. That's not a good enough reason anymore to stop doing something. Nobody cares now if you're truly good at something, only whether you're competent and productive. If I write a hundred competent poems, I will be a poet.

prev archive next
0 comments