Defensive

Instances Where You Can Use Someone’s Else’s Poetry

Poetry has gotten kind of a bad rap.
Not w-r-a-p, like Saran
But r-a-p, like hip hop
But not hip hop,
(Although hip hop is poetry)

But rap,
Like slang for reputation.
It can be confusing

Those last lines are probably part of the problem.
Part of the reason poetry’s gotten such a bad rap.

But don’t throw poetry out with me!

I am the bathwater.
Poetry is the baby.
It’s not poetry’s fault that I’m not a very good poet.
I’m just not.
There are lots of other poets who will tell you that I’m not
And some them are good.

Not Good capital G
Like Good versus Evil.
But good poets.
Which actually is a Good thing to be.
We really need some good poets.
Because most of the good ones are dead.1
But you can read their work.
In the bible.
Or your World Lit Anthology.

That’s why so many of us bad poets keep writing.
We’re keeping the seat warm.
Waiting for the good guys.
We’re sirens.
Writing and writing our bad poetry.
Hoping some good genius will take notice
And come over here and fix all this.

Or maybe

We are good poets.
But the problem is that we’re not dead yet.
But one day
When you’re dead
And I’m dead
And a-lot of other people are dead
Someone who is alive will read this poetry
And they will say
“WOW!
That guy was really good!
It’s too bad he’s dead because I would really like to tell him what a good poet he is and how he helped me have a better day today and I wish all those people who were alive when he was alive treated him better and they really missed out and they should have been more appreciative of the genius in their midst!
Footnote:
When I’m quiet at night
I can hear that person.

The point is that regardless of your feelings on my poetry
Poetry, the Art, is valuable and useful to all of us

And here just a few examples where memorizing someone else’s poetry can be helpful.

A neighbor’s house is burning down,
someone behind you is playing a violin
and you want to sound really cool.

Your child’s first pet has just died
You’re having trouble taking the trauma seriously
But you want to say something
Just to let the kid know you care

You have to give an off-the-cuff Best Man Speech
Or
You have to give an off-the-cuff Eulogy

Really it’s useful at any formal or informal gathering
Where without warning the mob turns to you and shout-chants
SPEECH!
SPEECH!
SPEECH!
SPEECH!

For these random occurrences
I recommend having a handle on Robert Frost
Specifically,
The Road Not Taken
Sure everybody knows it and nobody is going to go
“Geez! That guy really knows his poetry!”
But here’s a secret.
When you recite poetry that everybody knows.
You not only make yourself look smart.
But you make everybody else, having recognized the poetry, feel smart as well.
And that makes everyone feel positively about you.
Which is the point of every speech.

So like I said
Poetry is very useful.

Oh!

I almost forgot
The whole reason I wrote the poem
Yesterday I was at Starbucks
I was really frustrated
There was a foreign person who just couldn’t order their beverage.
Which confused me.
Because
isn’t everything at Starbucks foreign?
It should be the one place in America
where every foreign person feels at home.
Starbucks,

It’s like America’s first Barack Obama.
Where we said
“Look World. We’re really trying.”

So I was convinced that that I was never going to get my coffee
Which was all I wanted
And I was frustrated and confused
Because if Starbucks doesn’t help us with the foreigners
What will?

And then it hit me.

T.S. Eliot

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but with a whimper

And suddenly my wait didn’t seem so bad
It even made a weird kind of sense


1. Not a fair point really. This is a pure numbers game. Of course most good poets are dead! The ranks of the living can never outnumber the dead. So there will naturally be more dead good poets than living ones. So we should all take a deep breath, acknowledge the value of our predecessors, and move on!