Sensible Poetry

In Leo Lionni’s children’s tale, Frederick, mice store provisions for winter – all except one mouse, Frederick, who doesn’t work but instead gathers sun rays, colors, and words.

How shameful, Frederick. You’re like the grasshopper that dances and plays while the ants work. Reader, don’t be like Frederick or the grasshopper. Be practical.

Don’t be like me. I write poetry, and in the words of Elizabeth Bishop (whose poem, “The Fish,” is among my favorites), “There’s nothing more embarrassing than being a poet.”

Thank you, Autumn Ware, for sharing this quote and thank you, Elizabeth Bishop, for boldly stating what I’ve been feeling: being a poet is supremely embarrassing.

I come from a scientific background. I come from a working background, a useful and rational background, not a pretty words dance and play poetry background. What do poets do? Nothing you need to be concerned about, young lady.

I was well advised to avoid the liberal arts in my youth – I’d never survive that way. So, I kept my love for reading as a mistress and married science.

But all that reading turned into an overflowing storage bin of words, tumbling uncontrollably over the top. I reached a threshold – maybe it was 10 billion words or so, I’d like to know, but there’s no going back now.

Suddenly, poetry

Last spring, I attended a workshop with Malaika King Albrecht at the Carteret Writers Conference. It was my first immersion into modern poetry, and Malaika didn’t disappoint. Since then, I’ve pursued poets at the library, the Internets, bookshops, critique groups, and literary journals. I’ll be assembling my own poetry collection this fall – hopeful, embarrassed, proud.

Not everyone approves, and I don’t blame them.

My husband only likes rhyming poems, like song lyrics. The other day, I found the CDs I burned for him when we were first dating. I think most of us have, at some point, made a “mix tape” or the equivalent for someone we love. The first song should suck them in, then the tracks should flow from one to the next, the tension rising, with a slow meaningful ending, such as a love song. Here – I made this for you. Wink wink.

That’s what a collection of poetry is: a mix tape for strangers.

Not only will I make a mix tape, I’m planning to get a bunch of poets together this February to read our work – an open mic, a jam session, a poet’s band. There might even be love poems, there in the bleakest month of the year.

How embarrassing. How sensible. How necessary.

In Frederick, when the mice got to their winter quarters, they eventually ate all the food and were left cold and miserable in their stone wall home.

They asked, ‘”What about your supplies, Frederick?'”

And his words brought back the summer sun, the bright colors, and a story to explain the seasons. He held the night at bay with the light of language.

‘”But Frederick,” they said. “You are a poet!”‘

by Jessi Waugh