Why Not to Write Poems

  

This is in response to a Brave Blogging prompt, to write a poem in less than ten minutes. The first draft was done in less than ten minutes, but there was some considerable revision. Another prompt was to write a "how to" piece, which, of course, elicited my contrary self. I ended up writing two; this is the second. The first is here: How Not to Write a Poem.

  

Why Not to Write Poems

 

“I’m a poet” makes for awkward social introductions.

No one reads poetry anymore. It’s old-fashioned,

irrelevant, and adolescent.

 

You don’t see the universe in the heart of a lily.

It just spits orange pollen all over your black turtleneck

and makes you sneeze.

 

Grammar is confusing. Poems are unnecessary.

They make nothing happen.* They don’t even

rhyme anymore.

 

You are insufficiently weird. Only goth teens,

hippies, queers, suicidal women, and old people

write poems.

 

Poets have to read poems. You read a poem once.

You hated it. The only famous poets are dead poets.

There are no rich poets.

 

You have no talent. You’re the wrong ethnicity.

You don’t know enough big words. You’ve got no

rhythm. And WTF are “line breaks”?

 

You’ve read that it takes years of study and practice

to write even one good poem. The only easy-to-write

poems are list poems. And they’re boring.

 

                                ~ sharon brogan / 18 september 02016

* “. . . poetry makes nothing happen . . .” W.H. Auden, In Memory of W. B. Yeats