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?
