Many years ago,
I tried my hand at poetry.
A couple of my
early “poems” were published in the student paper back in college, and I
thought I could probably develop my poetry writing skills more, try to improve
on my fledgling attempts.
I dropped it. Never
tried to write a poem ever since.
I used to love
reading poetry too. (I still enjoy the occasional poetry collection now and
then, but fiction is still my go-to read.) I loved trying to make sense of the
meaning of every poem, because to me a well-written poem should be
metaphorical. What you see isn’t what you get. A well-written poem is a puzzle
to be solved.
But ironically,
the biggest reason I quit trying to write poetry is I couldn’t make use of
metaphor or simile well. To me, my poems seemed superficial, shallow. Best
leave it to the experts, I thought.
Through the
years I’ve come across writers who’ve argued that poems should be more
“accessible,” and I’ve appreciated these “easy to read” poems as well. In
Stephen King’s celebrated memoir “On Writing,” he narrated how he fell in love
with his future wife, the novelist Tabitha King (who, back then, was still
using her maiden name, Tabitha Spruce).
Wrote King: “We
met when we were working in a library, and I fell in love with her during a
poetry workshop in the fall of 1969, when I was a senior and Tabby was a
junior. I fell in love with her partly because I understood what she was doing
with her work.”
Specifically,
in discussing one of Tabitha’s poems, King argued: “Her poem made me feel that
I wasn’t alone in my belief that good writing can be simultaneously
intoxicating and idea-driven . . . . There was also a work-ethic in the poem
that I liked, something that suggested writing poems (or stories, or essays)
had as much in
common with sweeping the floor as with mythy moments of revelation . . . . In
the discussion that followed Tab’s reading, it became clear to me that she
understood her own poem. She knew exactly what she had meant to say, and had
said most of it . . . . The point is that it was a reasonable poem in a
hysterical time, one sprung from a writing ethic that resonated all through my
heart and soul.”
There’s this
popular Filipino writer and creative writing professor that I admire and whose
work I’ve enjoyed reading—he has written fiction, essays, plays, screenplays,
and poems—who has, himself, been pretty much self-effacing on his attempts at
poetry, even though he has already successfully published a poetry collection,
along with his novels and essay and short story collections, and his drama.
I’ve also read poetry by Neil Gaiman (full disclosure: I’m aware of the recent
allegations of sexual harassment against Gaiman, which has devastated me
because he’s one of my favorite writers; I hope to write about this in a future
blog post) and Chuck Palahniuk—none of whom are exactly known for their poetry.
Their poems, at least in my estimation, are very accessible and are devoid of
metaphor and simile.
In Gaiman’s
case, I read some of his poems when he decided to sprinkle them throughout his
first short story collection, “Smoke and Mirrors,” probably as fillers. In
Palahniuk’s case, his poems served as the framing device—or connecting tissue,
if you will—for a collection of his short stories that he tried (quite
unsuccessfully, in my opinion), to turn into a novel because that was what his
publishers wanted him to put out for his next book, not a short story
collection.
Gaiman’s and
Palahniuk’s poems reminded me of Edgar Allan Poe’s poetry, probably because all
three of them are known for writing about horror and the macabre—in both their
poetry and fiction. And sure, a lot of Poe’s gothic and love poems require some
moments of careful dissection (which is fun in and of itself), but a lot of
them are of the WYSIWG (what you see is what you get) variety too.
And of course,
there are the so-called Instapoets, Lang Leav and Rupi Kaur, whose work has
polarized readers worldwide. The Instapoets tag came about because their fans
often describe Leav’s and Kaur’s work as “Instagrammable,” with quotable lines
that are perfect for sharing.
While some
critics of the two Instapoets argue that their works lack complexity or depth,
their stans assert that the emotional impact and relatability of their poems
are what matter most.
I have a huge
problem with the gatekeeping of poetry; for me, Leav’s and Kaur’s poems make
poetry accessible to a broader audience, particularly the younger generations.
Or would we
rather have them reading memes exclusively instead?
