Poetry

Somehow, I let National Poetry Month pass without reviewing a single collection of poetry. In fact, I have never reviewed a single poem for this website. This omission is particularly glaring since at one point, many moons ago, I fancied myself a bit of a budding poet. In fact, I actually wrote an entire collection of poetry for my master’s thesis.

In honor of poetry, then, I have decided to dedicate this entire week to poetry reviews. I know that many people, including myself, dislike poetry or feel intimidated by it. So, to jumpstart the week, here’s a blurb from my thesis about my relationship with poetry:

[S]omewhere between junior high and my freshman year at [college], I learned to despise poetry. Poetry was no longer something to listen to, to memorize, or to enjoy. Instead, it became a sadistic game between poets and students. Billy Collins describes the process in his poem “Introduction to Poetry.”

I decided that only brilliant students or students with emotional depths deeper than my own could understand poetry, and I hated it for making me feel stupid and shallow. . . . [I thought] poets were members of an otherworldly realm. They saw things in life and knew things about life that I could not see and did not know.

Ten years ago . . . I believed good poetry was dense and impenetrable. I have learned, though, that is not necessarily the case. I can read poems and enjoy the images, the rhythms, and the sounds without dissecting them.

For the rest of the week, then, I will review a few collections of poetry I believe even normal people, if you can consider me normal, will enjoy without falling into the depths of despair or exhausting their mental capacities.