When is a Prose Poem Not a Poem? When it's ajar?
I subscribe to the Academy of American Poet's Poem-A-Day and therefore receive a poem each day in my inbox. Somedays (ok, many more than some), I delete them. If I have 10 minutes to read a poem that day, it will be a poem I want to read, not one that mysteriously appears. Other days, like yesterday, I'm in the mood for poems and have nothing particular in mind, so I'm happy to be surprised.
It's important that a poem knows me well enough to be willing to crawl into bed with me and try to spoon me, knowing I might elbow it in the teeth. It has to want to hold my hand in public. When I read Museum of Accidents, I wept and laughed for 1/2 hour on the T in Boston. I never noticed anyone else was on the train with me until I got to the end of the line and realized I'd missed my stop. The same for Brigit Pegeen Kelly's Song (but that was on the bus).
Each year when the sun starts setting before I've started dinner, I go through a poetry identity crisis. I reconsider poetry's place in my life and in the world and why it matters. (Note: it is also rejection & acceptance season.) Each fall, I start over by reading the poets who raised me & the poems that spoon-fed me when I was sick in bed, or stranded on a beach, or in love while walking on a sidewalk in some strange city. And I feel good again. I feel like the Grinch at the end of when he's stealing Christmas, and his heart busts out of its little cage.
I'm usually not too disappointed in the poems I get. For instance, one day, I received Gergory Sherl's poem, "Two Minus One,"which happened to be the exact poem I wanted to read that day. Another nice thing about the AAP brand of P-a-D is that you can click on "Related Poems," and they will point you to other (sometimes) great poems, like "Beach Walk," by Henri Cole. WOWZAH.
Some days, I read the day's poem and think: "Oh? Someone likes this?"
Yesterday, I didn't get a poem in my email. I got a story. A good story, albeit, but I'm struggling to find the poem in it. "A Fairy Tale," by Jennifer L. Knox. It's is a terrible, sad story (terrible & sad in the best way possible).
Of course, talking about the problem of prose poems is boring, so I won't. My first time at AWP a few years ago, I sat in on a (surprisingly entertaining) panel in which Tony Hoagland and a few other poets & writers discussed the matter for an hour without any sense of closure. Now, I'm exhausted by the matter and don't care. I like very few of them. In general, when I look for a poem and find myself inside a big chunk of text without room to breathe, I look around for the nearest exit.
Once, at a party, I was telling a writer I'd just met about this fantastic panel I'd attended at Harvard on sentiment in poetry. Rachel Zucker was there, and she was amazing, and she hugged me because I was crying... it's a good story. I'll tell it sometime, but not now. The point is that I told this fellow about how much I loved Rachel Zucker, and he asked, "Oh, so you like (what did he call it? Confessional? No... I can't remember) such-n-such kind of poetry," and I was confused. If I like a poet, does it mean I like a style of poetry? Definitely not. (She, by the way, is my favorite one-person poet.) If I like a prose poem, do I like prose poems? No. I like that one prose poem.
Once, at a party, I was telling a writer I'd just met about this fantastic panel I'd attended at Harvard on sentiment in poetry. Rachel Zucker was there, and she was amazing, and she hugged me because I was crying... it's a good story. I'll tell it sometime, but not now. The point is that I told this fellow about how much I loved Rachel Zucker, and he asked, "Oh, so you like (what did he call it? Confessional? No... I can't remember) such-n-such kind of poetry," and I was confused. If I like a poet, does it mean I like a style of poetry? Definitely not. (She, by the way, is my favorite one-person poet.) If I like a prose poem, do I like prose poems? No. I like that one prose poem.
It's important that a poem knows me well enough to be willing to crawl into bed with me and try to spoon me, knowing I might elbow it in the teeth. It has to want to hold my hand in public. When I read Museum of Accidents, I wept and laughed for 1/2 hour on the T in Boston. I never noticed anyone else was on the train with me until I got to the end of the line and realized I'd missed my stop. The same for Brigit Pegeen Kelly's Song (but that was on the bus).
I love every word of this. You should be paid to blog.
ReplyDeleteThanks! I think I'm too bad at self-promotion to get paid to do anything I enjoy... Your new website it lovely, by the way. We miss you here all the time!
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