National Poetry Month: Why Poetry?

Why do people write? Moreover, why do people write poetry? People are led to believe, from a very young age, that poetry is an esoteric art, reserved for the "big" topics of life, such as love, death, sex, and revolution. I, on the other hand, was brought up in a house that had poetry on the wall of the bathroom. Poetry could literally be the thing you read to pass the time while sitting on the john. This is why I love the Poetry in Motion concept. Poetry on public transportation! How fitting! I think of poetry as a sort of photography, a way to remember my life. I never thought I couldn't do it. I think everyone can do it. All you have to do to write a decent poem is pay attention. I actually don't think I am a particularly good writer--I think that I pay attention to details and write them down, and that fact of me stealing imagery from the world leads some to think that I write well, when what I actually do is remember well. Most of the poems I've written are about things that happened to me, in the world, in real life.

But sometimes you have to remember that people write poetry because they love to read poetry. I'm thankful to the people who write interesting poems, because they have been entertaining me since I was 4 years old. I wrote this years ago, maybe when I was in my late 20s. It's still true.



Juvenilia
by Katy Jacob

I like to read the ones written before anyone knew
they were supposed to be good,
when the presently famous or long dead and immortalized
had a myriad of day jobs and dreams,
had whole lives ahead of them and
couldn't see how they would be,
so they wrote it all down just in case
it turned out to be interesting.

I like knowing there was a time before they had time
to ponder insects and big words, when mortality was a concept
they didn't want to get too close to,
when it was just life, and they could see it,
and they kept asking for it, even in absence
of anyone else caring, even when it was boring,
or hard, or less than they thought they wanted.

Once they arrive, once there's a Pulitzer or Nobel or Tanner
in their names, they can write about anything and get paid for it--
they have the privilege of self-absorption
and isolation if they choose, and no one says,

Here's a new collection, ever so much more remote
from the insignificance that made her great,
that made him write in subways and at bus stops
on the way to work, that made them write
anyway, even though, in spite of, because it was just
something to do while the world opened up,
almost by accident and without anyone paying attention.

I like the incidentals present in all the early ones,
the surprise, the flaws, the endless presence of the mundane,
the way you read them and think

Maybe that bar was where he fell in love,
maybe that waltz was the first dance she ever learned,
maybe that sky was the one that said,
you can write about me, you can mourn my expanse,
you won't be young that long, you know,
and I, even I, won't last forever.