The Poetics of Reluctance

Rachel Pollack, in her book on the Tarot, wrote about the Ace of Pentacles: "Spiritual work leads us to recognize magic in ordinary things."

(Pencil on Paper)

All language is magic, but poetry may be the most distilled. I’m pretty angry about that sentence and I can't say I even agree with it, despite the fact that I’m the one who wrote it.

I do not like poetry. Not in the sense that I do not enjoy it or I think it's bad or a waste of time. Maybe what I mean is that I don't trust poetry. Because it's slippery. And evasive. Like most slippery things are.

I don't get where it's coming from or where the hell it's going or what it's doing in that outfit or how it picked out those shoes. Poetry is fucking suspicious. I always feel like it knows more than it's saying and I'm missing everything while it laughs at me.

I've fallen in love with it a few times. When I first read Anne Sexton's The Starry Night. When I was high out of my mind in the dark and someone read the line from Ginsberg's America: "When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?" When I read Bachelard's works about space and place and imagined futures betrayed.

I can feel the beauty of it, but it is an absolute mystery to me. I should adore poetry: I like patterns, networks, abstractions, concepts. I like esoterica. What's more occult than poetry, incantations in the void?

One thing stopping me is my core trait of being far too serious and earnest for my own good. Well, the universe has found a joke to play on me.

I spent the last six months ardently and earnestly leaning toward strangers in public and telling them to make their art every day and not worry if it's perfect or even good. I encouraged them to be brave. And then one of those people told me I should write poetry. I said, "Oh, no, I can't write poetry." And they said, "Oh, yes, I bet you can."

"That's ridiculous," I thought, smiling and nodding, "I'm not doing that."

Because I am a slow, plodding thinker who turns things over and over and over, it took me about 3 days to realize that I'd just experienced the shit I'd been pitching to people from the other side. It was like finally getting out from under Mary Kay sales by selling all your stock and then waking up from a nap with a smiling woman at your door with a goddamn color wheel.

The audacity!

If there's anything that woos me, it's audacity. And being smacked upside the head with the obviousness of my own hypocrisy is pretty persuasive, too.

So. Goddamnit.

I'm going to write poetry. Ugh, just writing that makes me queasy. But, look, I'm going to tryyyyy to be a person with feelings who is deep, thoughtful, and eloquent. And sensitive. I am also trying to do what I've asked of others. I hate to think what the universe would do to me if I couldn't hold up that end of the bargain. Maybe something costly. I just hope no one suggests I take up something even worse than poetry, like lace knitting or hugging.