Degas's Tangles: Why to write poetry, even if you aren't any good at it.

Degas https://g.co/arts/DDMyuU3B5CMESWdt5

 So, you want to write poetry? Know this first. Writing poetry is a full-contact sport. Blood is involved--and terror--mixed with a bit of bravery and not a small amount of stupidity. 

I admit, the bruises of football or boxing could be too strong a metaphor for what poets do. However. Know this. You can, at the very least, expect to feel the pang of tangles combed out of your hair when you attempt pull out the poetry which is hidden under the surface of your self. 

So why do you even want to go to these raw places and offer yourself up? You will become a living sacrifice, and who wants that? There is no holding back, no halfsies, no secrets. A poet looks for the bright shining pinnacle of beauty pared down to bare primal forms. Once you begin to write poetry you time-travel back to the nakedness of the Garden. However, in this garden of your creation, you don't need to be ashamed, but you could be very, very afraid. Your words might never bunch themselves together in an acceptable bouquet of meaning. You are likely to be left holding your dead darlings in a handful of rotting frippery or worse, plastic chintz. How will you face that special kind of embarrassment when your deepest thoughts and emotions wave at the world on stems of laughable, sterile, forget-me-nots? 

And yet you still want to write poetry?

Of course you do!

And you should...because dead flowers are more lovely than non-existent ones. Also, should you fail, at least chintz reminds us of our grandmothers. Go toward that raw and fearful place. Write your little poems, expose some skin, share your imperfections. Post them, write them out by hand on scraps of paper, tuck them like tracts into the stalls of a few gas-station bathrooms. Send them to a lover. Or a stranger. Or your grandmother. 

Or me. 

Degas https://g.co/arts/eiSyp4cykqcCqRqv6

The idea of "Full Contact" comes from p7 Foster, Thomas C. How to Read Poetry like a Professor: A Quippy and Sonorous Guide to Verse. HarperCollins Publishers, 2018.

On May 19th, 1:00-2:30 I will be holding a class on poetry appreciation at the Greenwood Library. There might be some time given to share poetry you have written, should you join us. The library and I will be providing materials to create poetry/art notebooks, a practice I have enjoyed since I was about 20 years old. I don't feel qualified to teach a poetry writing experience, but I do know that reading and enjoying other writer's poems is the first step toward writing your own, and I can certainly share how much I like poetry. I would love to have you join me. Register here: https://fb.me/e/34F66gm0e

PS. I just need to temper the angst--Sometimes my favorite poems don't touch this raw and fearful places. For example the Sir John Suckling poem that I memorized this way (click here for more accurate quote ):

"Love is the fart of every heart

for when held in it pains the host,

but when released, pains others most"