Poetry for the Rest of Us
Maybe it doesn't have to be so tortured...
A few weeks ago, I surprised myself by writing a poem for this piece. I don’t consider myself a poet, so it baffles me a bit when a poem shows up and requests to be made. After I hit send, I realized it was the same day Taylor Swift dropped her Tortured Poets Department album in the wee hours of the morning. I spent the rest of the day cracking up imagining making the same amount of ruckus about my whale poem and tweeting an extra flamingo verse at 2 am, leaving people speechless with delight. I’m no Swiftie, but girlfriend knows how to create a frenzy and get paid for her art, so hats off to you, Tay-Tay.
All the chatter made me think about why we associate poets with being tortured and consider my fraught relationship with the form and craft known as poetry. If you’d asked me five years ago if I liked poetry, I would have said no.
Besides dabbling with Elizabeth Barrett Browning, I don’t remember reading any poetry outside high school, but I’d always been interested in writing, so I took a good amount of English lit courses in college. Although I did well in an academic sense, I never felt like I came alive in those classes. Even if I participated in the discussion, I’d leave feeling like the poetry was over my head, too deep for me, reserved for the artistic crowd, the real poets who did seem…tortured. Part of me wanted to be one of them—wearing black and berets, smoking cigarettes, and scribbling in notebooks. But I was neither cool nor tortured enough—I was fresh-faced and dressing up for the annual barn dances and making homemade face masks for my middle school youth group girls’ spa night. A poem about a do-si-do, anyone?
The poetry was in me, even though I didn’t acknowledge it. I know because I’ve been reading stacks of my journals for a writing project, and let’s just say—WOW. If I ever become “too big for my britches” as my grandma says, please request a reading from these relics. Some people hold back in case someone finds their journals, but not this girl. This girl had feelings. In college, she had poems about those feelings. They are a treat—earnest with a capital E. A few take a dark twist, with lines like—“A tear forms in my eye, sometimes eager just to die.”
Sounds like a tortured poet to me. Get the girl a beret and some cigarettes!
I did not get her a beret—I tucked away her rhyming chiming thoughts of death, and spent my 20s with a constant stream of people, trying to lean away from my feelings and pretend they weren’t there. I read serious books, systematic books, and very little poetry. In my 30s, I tortured myself by falling for a few poets who sent me evocative and obscure lines from their notebooks, keeping me hooked for a good long while, as I tried to grasp the vast expanse of their emblematic minds, still believing I wasn’t deep enough to get it.
And yet, poetry found me. It snuck in, beginning with my brother gifting me John O’Donohue’s To Bless the Space Between Us a decade ago. The beauty of his words captured me in a way I still haven’t recovered from. A few years later, I started on Mary Oliver, her gentle lines and earthy content accessible to this country girl. Poetry Unbound was next, as another warmhearted Irishman offered thoughts about pieces I would never read on my own. It’s been a slow discovery, without forcing myself on a strict regime as some kind of self-improvement program.
If we’re open, art finds us when we need it. I needed this particular form for this particular moment. My last five years have been a season of upheaval with more solitude and quiet than I ever thought possible. I’ve been sitting with the great unknown and attempting to re-create my life after its dismantling during the pandemic years.
The poets have been my friends. They’ve met me in the mornings, with a cup of coffee, and a reminder from Mary’s goldfinches that “It is a serious thing, just to be alive on this fresh morning in the broken world.”1 They’ve given me one perfect line to dance in my head all day. I learned recently that stanza is Italian for room, and that’s poetry to me. The practice of reading a piece or two feels like an exhale, a room that’s just the right size, a container for my scattered mind. As the frenetic pace of the Bay Area returns and my life speeds back up, savoring a few words turns down the noise and helps me be present if even for minute.
We expand and surprise ourselves.
Maybe my 40s are my not-so-tortured poet years, because I’m going for it—letting myself fall in love with the verses, admit I’m smitten with the images, metaphors, and the the truth told slant, as Emily Dickinson says. I’ll find myself quoting a line during conversation or getting a text with a piece from my poetry loving pals. Every once in a while, I’ll be "with poem"—that surprises me too.
I’m learning that poetry is as varied as people, and I don’t like all of it. I have much to learn about the craft, but this time around, I’m not finding it torturous. Tender? Yes. Mystical? Perhaps. Did I recently linger to watch a heron by the water, prompted by Wendell Berry’s invitation to sit with the peace of wild things when despair for the world grows?2 Maybe I did.
I like this version of me—the one who has time for the heron and the names of the full moons, who has list of volumes to try, and is saving the new work by
for the right moment. I like the me who suggested a poem reflection session at a retreat, unsure how I was going to lead it, the me who embraced the quiet as people reflected and let the beauty unfold.I’m not sure how long this phase will last, but I’m glad to be on this path. Maybe a new art form is next, something else for this season. I’ve been running into someone who keeps inviting me to try tango. Do I like tango? I have no idea. What I like this movement of becoming myself.
Oh wait, that’s from another poem.3 Perhaps the poetry is here to stay.
What about you—any poetry scars like me?
For you poetry lovers, I’d love to hear about your favorite books or lines that have stuck with you over the years.
And the most important question, should I try tango?
Or connect with me on Instagram: @jackieknapp_
Loved this post. I never understood poetry until I read Madeleine L'Engle. And then her words changed me. John O'Donohue and Mary Oliver are such good companions too! As is Jan Richardson (she got me through the pandemic).
"An exhale ... a room that's just the right size." What a gorgeous way to describe a stanza of poetry. This message has inspired me to dig up some poetry this weekend. Ps. I'm on the look out for a well-crafted, do-si-do poem.