Yeah, you lost me at MFA. ;) Not writing to change, or try to change, your mind. Just an observation and also, applause.

A bump on the head effectively ended my college aspirations. I remember walking into class and my professors spoke in word salads overnight. I re-learned to read in my 30’s.

I didn’t like poetry in high school, mostly because it seemed as though we were being exposed to “sanctioned academic voices” that were supposed to “show us” how to do it right. And the whole “Now, we’re going to deconstruct…” in AP English. Man.

Then, I married an English major, I was exposed to the rosy academic world of academia. I remarked recently, “Holy shit, dodged THAT bullet.”

Listening to poetry in readings that had been scrubbed of all the stuff that makes them evocative…it’s like all the guts and juice and emotion had been wrung clean out of it.

My daughter is getting her MFA and doing it RIGHT, Mother. Meaning she doesn’t like my poetry anymore. A year-out from getting her BA is when she started nodding politely when she’d hear me read.

I was asked recently(ish) to read a poem at NULC, (National Undergrad Literature Conference) along with a bunch of teachers in the English department (no I don’t teach, I write, and my husband is an attorney by day, poet by night), and they all read each other’s poetry from tiny journals out of somewhere, or they read Keats, Moore, Shakespeare, et. al.

I read Bukowski’s, “So You Want to be a Writer?”

Pretty sure the applause was just to be polite, too.

An older guy approached me after and said he liked Bukowski, but that was his opening to tell me he’d been published, once, in The New Yorker…back…in the day? He went on to say that in the very next issue, Saul Bellow(!!!) was in it so he was pretty much a big deal (not Bellow, the older guy.)

He went on to disparage people who didn’t “learn to do it right” before “trying to write” and had I ever heard of him? I just shook my head. Then, he went after local writers. All amateurs. Only people of the world can write…

Well. I’m only so patient.

At the end of his treatise, I said, “Well, good luck. I’m not really interested in submitting my stuff to the literary journals. I’m just happy my stuff gets read.”

See? I can be polite.

I like poetry like I like vegetables. There is just nothing that will make me EVER say, “Mmmm cauliflower, huh? Yum.” I don’t like many vegetables, even though I’m supposed to eat a bunch for my health. So I do it. I just do it in a way that makes sense. And see…

I’m not buying it. You seem just “this side” of too intelligent, too strong (nope, not pandering, just saying it) to use all those excuses about why you don’t like poetry.

You can go ahead and blame your dad, your teachers, the MFA program (I’ve got it on good authority they kill your soul) or your inner teen who probably wrote great poetry for a teen based on how well you write as an adult…you can keep giving your inner child her way, I guess.

OR, you can just say “Meh. Poetry. Not a fan.”

I don’t know why that isn’t okay. I think it IS okay.

So, I’m glad you wrote this article because there are a lot of people out there who say they hate poetry because of a variation on the themes you mention, but also? The number one complaint I hear about poetry is this: it’s inaccessible. Well, academic poetry you need a Reader’s Guide to “get.”

Which is fine. If that’s your audience, great. I’m not disparaging higher learning. I’ve just coached too many “higher-learned” writers with English degrees who can’t unlearn their MFA instructor’s voice and find their own. That’s all.

My audience is people who love words. Doesn’t matter if they’re in stanzas, in a form, metered, or have stinky or rose-scented feet. (ha)

I could let my ex-husband (who gave me the little bump[s]) keep telling me (in my damaged noggin’), I’m “stupid, lazy, and have a terrible personality and NO sense of humor…” (I just had to challenge that one. I mean, I married him, didn’t I? See? NOT funny…)

I could let my older brother keep influencing me, because when he was in high school and I was still in grade school he called me…well he didn’t use the word “pretentious” (you’ll see why, below). But whenever I’d use a word he didn’t know, he’d make fun of me.

“‘Enamored?’ Yes, Julie, I was enamored with her. Enamored. Ohh, look at my big words…enamored…”

I told him (because I remember it well, obviously), “I can’t help it if I’m literate.”

“Oooh, literate. YES, you’re so…”

Now he’s a doctor.

And he still hates it when I use big words. Like pretentious. Which I try not to be when I write poetry, despite having a better-than-fair vocabulary — poetry isn’t where you show that off, IMO.

When it first came out, someone reviewed my first poetry collection. It had won some local awards, some national reviews that were fine yada-yada-who-cares. The point?

She wrote “This isn’t poetry. This coffee-shop talk and filth.” (Or trash or something.) Naturally I wrote a poem called “Poetry” for YouTube. :) Another reviewer wrote that my poems read like stupid social media posts.

Then my editor read it (my fiction editor, not my poetry editor). And she found the layers. All of the layers. They resonated with her even though she’s the EiC of a small literary house in NYC and we’ve got nothing in common on the surface, really. Some of my other readers are: a “military wife” from Kentucky, a stand-up comedian in the UK, and a sex worker from Nevada.

And no, not going to foist on you. You can Google if you’re curious. I just think…someone like you could be missing out on a lot of cool words. I love them, too. And…someone once wrote that “poetry is for healing the wounds inflicted by reason.” And I’m too lazy to Google who that was, but I love that quote.

Mostly what I’ve learned as a full-time novelist, poet, artist is this: most of the time, what people think of my work is not a reflection of my work or the skill with which I create it. But how they receive my work speaks volumes about them.

Sorry, Marshall (and Medium, and yes, I had to look him up. I thought it was Malcolm Gladwell who said it): the medium isn’t always the message. Sometimes, the recipient of the message is the message.

I think every writer is a poet. Every painter is a poet. Everything is poetry. Poetry is not words. Poetry is not a language. Poetry is not an action or motion. It is all of that, and it is none of that. And in this poet’s opinion, you are a poet. Because when anything strikes an emotional chord within you, that is poetry. Because poetry exists where all else fails to communicate our own humanity to one another.

And to the many here who have felt diminished by the literati and erudite lovers of highbrow poetry, I say: This article is poetry, because it is accessible and inclusive. I feel validated, respected, and I don’t feel diminished or “dumb” because it’s written in a way that only makes sense to people who know how to pronounce Proust.

So Shaunta, sorry, that proves my point. You accomplished something with your writing that Yeats, Keats, and perhaps Wordsworth, doesn’t for many of us: it connects rather than alienates.

And I think that’s poetry.

But what do I know?

“Bronco_fan” whatever called my poetry “trash.”

Whatareyagonnado.

(See? Not trying to change your mind. Ahem. :D )