Thoughts About Poetry

I have plans this Friday evening (can you believe it?).

At 5:30 (just 26 minutes from now), I’ll be Facetiming with a couple of friends as we prepare to watch the live episode of How Did This Get Made—all about the movie CATS.

As you can probably guess, it’s going to be a doozy.

And while I’m ecstatic about hearing Jason Mantzoukis scream in agony over having had to watch this film and about hearing what can only be June’s unique take on the CGI, this event doesn’t give me much time to write—something I promised to do every day.

So, I decided to try to quickly write a poem. Having nearly failed poetry in college (yes, I was required to take poetry to graduate as a Creative Writing major), I know better than to try to write something so quickly.

The thing about poetry is that it may be short in form, but the process of creating it is lengthy.

There is so much thought that goes into every. single. word.

Not only does the meaning of each word have to work harder than any word in other forms of writing, but the structure of the piece itself is a complicated architecture of pauses, emphasis, flow, and significance.

Now, instead of writing a poem, I’ve ended up writing about poetry. And maybe that’s where I’ll leave things today.

Rather than try to rush this artform in order to get something up on the blog, I’ll simply let this stand in its stead.