Poetry that makes my world shift
Some poems seem inaccessible. But when one resonates, it changes our perceptions.
By Dawn Goldsmithfrom the April 3, 2008 edition
Page 1 of 2
My copy of Mid-American Review lay on the table for weeks. Literary writing and I don't always mix well. It stands elite and all-knowing, nose in the air, page after page of introspection based upon Greek myths and sophisticated-yet-obscure references that only a few will recognize – or so it seems.
Literary writing ranks right beside country music for me. I know, strange bed-fellows. Yet I tire of the dog getting kicked, the woman getting pregnant, the man leaving, the woman running off with the stranger, the truck breaking down. It is a rare country song that captures my ear.
I would venture to say I feel rather elitist when listening to country music, and I don't like myself when I feel that way. And I feel like an uneducated dunce when reading literary writings, which is another self-perception I can live more happily without.
And don't get me started on poetry. Mostly I ramble through the lines, and the last word is always my own question: "Huh?"
There are a few poets I embrace. Anything Alice Folkart writes, I love. I like Alice, too! And I'm fond of woolly-eyebrowed Robert Frost and his roads less taken. I even like Carl Sandburg and his fog on cats' feet. I enjoy Jane Yolen's poems for children. And I adore Shel Silverstein. But when it comes to real adult poetry – Emily Dickinson is understandable, usually. My sister-in-law writes poetry for family and friends, and her poems always make me smile and nod; I can "see" the people she writes about. So I love her poetry; it connects me to a home I haven't seen in too many years.
Usually I don't even bother to read the poetry in literary journals. I know they'll leave me in the dust before I've read the first line. But in some perverse, self-demoralizing way – or maybe it was just hope sprung anew with the dawning of a new year – I opened Volume XXVIII, Number 1 and began reading Bob Hicok's "Making the list I will never make."
OK, with this one my "Huh?" came right after reading the title. But it was a "Huh? What list could that be?" Not "Huh, I don't know what he's talking about."
He didn't beat around the bush. He told me the answer in the first line: "I'm supposed to write down what I want of my father's when he dies."
Oh. I read on. I liked the way he described how he doodled on the page instead of beginning the list. I also liked the way he made his doodles seem as if he held someone's life or future in his hands, holding the eraser ready to save a life.
Then, instead of the minutiae I expected to see on his list he wrote: "Your Jupiter.... Your subway system."
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