Why Don't We Read Poetry?

Poems about Poems: Why not? by Katha Pollitt is a charming blog entry, topped off with "The Poet's Occasional Alternative," a lovely poem by Grace Paley. Here is an excerpt:

"everybody will like this pie...

many friends

will say why in the world did you

make only one

this does not happen with poems"

People do seem to appreciate pies more than poems. In fact, on most people's lists of 'ways to spend my time,' reading poetry ranks extraordinarily low. When I was teaching in Brooklyn this past January, I discovered that poetry-hating does not seem to be a natural human inclination, as evidenced by the Creative Writing students' vociferous consumption of the poetry Ms. Sacks made available. As practice for the eighth-grade ELA exam, we solicited essays comparing two Langston Hughes poems, and several of them were delighted to discover this poet. I don't suppose that these inner-city kids then took it upon themselves to seek out poetry, but if it were regularly presented to them, they wouldn't turn up their noses.

I love reading poetry, but it isn't often that I actually do it. I considered reading a poem a day and blogging about it, to boost my own poetry consumption as well as critical skills, and to give readers (if I ever acquire any) an interesting education in the field. And I landed upon The Best American Poetry blog, but I didn't come up with a method of extracting a poem from the internet daily, at least not one that I expected myself to follow through on. Still, I plan to add some books of poetry to my regular reading, and to post the occasional poem discovery on this blog. And every time I come across a poem, I am determined to give it a fair chance before I take my usual recourse: skimming, and then skipping over it.