I’m not much of a poetry person. It attracts too many awful writers. Poetry is a genre that’s easy to work in, and even easier to work in badly. There isn’t a college sophomore in America who hasn’t read T. S. Eliot or Langston Hughes and scurried back to his dorm room to pen a regrettable sonnet about love or loss or loneliness. English teachers, I entreat you to warn them all: “It looks easy, but it’s more difficult than writing a novel!”
Now there are, of course, exceptions, and Rita Dove is perhaps the most significant. I was introduced to her work during my undergraduate years–back when she was the US poet laureate–and I was instantly smitten. Her poems are concise but breathtakingly deep; narrative but enticingly abstract; approachable but full of meaning that’s never fully unveiled. Shortly after that first encounter, she visited my campus, and I did the unthinkable.
I wrote a poem to Rita Dove.
Yes, I too fell prey to the lure of weighty, maudlin verse–blank verse, even. I pored over a page full of verbs and adjectives so pregnant with meaning they could’ve birthed quadruplets. After a day of wordsmithing, I typed up my opus, and I sent it to her. Ugh. Just thinking about it makes me cringe (not unlike a few other things I’ve mentioned before). She was kind enough to write back–and with a very personalized letter, too–but I could tell from the tone she was all, like, “That’s cute and everything, but why don’t you just leave the poetry writing to me?”
Luckily for all concerned, I found other outlets for my alleged creativity, and Rita kept writing. Now she’s got a new book on the shelves, and apparently, it’s stunning. If it’s anything like her previous work, I highly recommend including it on your list of holiday gifts.
As a special bonus, here’s one of my favorites. It’s perhaps an odd choice for a guy–especially a gay guy–but there you are…
Medusa
I’ve got to go
down where my eye
can’t reach
hairy star
who forgets to shiver
forgets the cool suck
inside
Someday long
off someone will
see me
fling me up
until I hook
into sky
drop his memory
My hair
dry water
—from Grace Notes
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