Mar/Apr 1998

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Stacks of poetry books are resting on my desk, slim books with shiny covers, like hard little pills of intensity and voluptuous emotion. They are the paper equivalent of social x-rays; they exude the philosophy "You can never be too thin or too rich." No wonder I'm intimidated.

My husband and I agreed to arm-wrestle a hearty stack o' poetry in preparation for National Poetry Month, and I think we were selected primarily for our ignorance. In my case, it's an ignorance standing in heroic resistance to years of experience. I started out writing poetry, and at the age of 13 won an award for one about a deserted town, I think because of the dead flies on a windowsill. I also got to say "thee" and "nought" and other hoity words you can only use in poems. For ten years I had a ball being a poet. I read and wrote a great deal of the stuff, then gave it up for changing diapers.

When I came back to writing, a half-dozen years ago, it never crossed my mind to resume poetry. Too many diapers, car pools, sleepovers, and prom dresses had played havoc with my ability to think concisely. But I was also aware that the poetry industry had gone through a number of software upgrades since I last twirled an "oftimes."

In a South Carolina girls' school in 1964, I was writing sonnets, ballads, an occasional sestina. Now the Queen of American Poesy appears to be Jorie Graham, Pulitzer-crowned beauty, "swathed in black from head to foot, with enough bracelets and necklaces and rings to herniate a belly dancer," according to the New Yorker's Stephen Schiff. A sample poem begins, "Even the plenitude is tired of the magnanimous"—wait a minute, I started laughing. Oh, my. OK, here she goes:

Even the plenitude is tired of the magnanimous, disciplined, ...