Beauty of Poetry

I've always been a fan of poetry but it wasn't until I took a contemporary poetry class in college that I really fell in love with it. For the first time ever, we were encouraged to give our opinion on the piece. The only thing was that we had to support our reasoning, i.e. if it sucked, then you had to say why it sucked. Plenty of people did but enough people usually liked the same piece so that there would be a debate. My favorite project for that class was to give a lecture on a poet. I chose Bob Dylan. From him, I was really able to see the correlation between music and poetry. I was already a music lover, with lyrics on my bedroom walls, shoes, and notebooks so I took it one step further and incorporated poetry.

About the same time that I started taking more poetry classes, a friend of mine introduced me to Charles Bukowski, a skid-row poet. Bukowski writes in a very straightforward, no bullshit manner. Addicted to red wine and horse races, he makes no excuses for his behavior. Randomly opening "Slouching Toward Nirvana"

I went to the worst of bars
hoping to get
killed.
but all I could do was to
get drunk
again.

(181) from "the suicide kid." Yes, this opening verse is not that happy and the bluntness adds to the bleakness but it is honest, and ultimately that is what poetry should be. Bukowski in many ways reminds me of e.e. cummings with the ability play with the poetic form and lack of regard for rules except for when they fit for him. Both influence my writing, especially in the directness and writing what I know not what I think I know.

I can't walk into a bookstore without buying a book of poetry. While some of them include the works of well known poets like e.e. cummings, Emily Dickinson, and Pablo Neruda, I will also pick up books by lesser-known poets because I either like the cover or I'll open the book to a random page and enjoy that particular poem. I have two full bookcases and about five milkcrates full of books, not including whatever piles I have laying about in my room. A third of all of this is poetry. And while I continue to write on my shoes and notebooks, I restrict my wallspace to closet space only. One would have to say that that contemporary poetry class I took so many years ago was a great success.