Making Your Own Days: The Pleasures of Reading and Writing Poetry Book

Oh, the pleasures of a good poem...

In truth, I've long been mystified/frustrated/put off by poetry. But over the years, an urge to understand, or at least better appreciate, what all the fuss has been about these last 3000 years has tugged at me. My only formal experiences of poetry study were in high school (in the appreciation mode) and college (1 course, in the academic mode). The former came at too early a point in my aesthetic/intellectual development, and made no greater impression on me than to excite an appreciation for certain imagery (paths diverting in woods, roads less traveled, etc.); the latter, though coming at a moment of budding intellectual confidence, laid waste any idea that I could ever understand poetry written by adults for adults (WTF does ANY poem by Elizabeth Bishop mean!? [seriously]). And so, save for enjoying the occasional Shakespeare play or bit of rhyme, poetry and I have largely steered clear of one another since English XXXX, my freshman(?) year in college.

Recently though, I've found myself lurking in the poetry sections of used bookstores, stealing glances at Dickenson, Auden, or Stevens anthologies (so many blackbirds!), and beginning to realize I've been missing out on something. How, then, to begin filling my gap (in defiance of that college poetry professor who told me -- possibly in more, and more florid, words -- that I had no friggin' idea what Elizabeth Bishop poems mean [flaming lantern balloons rising in the skies over Sao Paolo, or something to that effect, being the specific sense-straw that broke my student-interpreter's back]).

Well. How better to start anew down the path of barbaric yawps, iambic pentameters, and broken rhymes, than in the company of someone who has thought long and hard about all the above. I don't have time (or the opportunity that I'm aware) to sit in on a poetry class. The next best thing, I now appreciate, is to read such classes distilled in book form. Making Your Own Days met my own needs for a start-up read in this area perfectly. Kenneth Koch is an astute reader of poetry and a skillful guide to its endless subtleties. I have just finished his terrific long essay on poetry reading/writing/appreciation, and am about to turn to the lengthy anthology that forms the second half of his book. Hitherto, I might have read one of these poems, thought "that makes no sense at all," looked around to affirm that other imagined readers thought the same, then, dismissing the entire poetic enterprise, shut the book (+/- harumphing), and picked a history off my bookshelf. Armed with Koch's wise advice, this time round I'm confident I'll not only read his entire anthology through, but that I'll enjoy large swaths of it and -- perhaps -- grasp a poetic intent or two along the way.

Kind thanks, Professor Koch, for the inspiring lesson.