HOW TO POET

“Poetopia” is a feeling of community. It’s when spoken word moves an audience to laughter, sadness, and conviction. It’s when you leave with more friends than you arrived. It’s when your body sinks into the grass, the cool breeze restores your lungs, and the strangers on the blanket next to you aren’t strangers at all. 

Every so often, some journalist declares that “Literature is dead” in an op-ed. In a rose-colored hindsight, these articles are underlined with a nostalgic yearning for bygone writers, capturing the “ineffable but all-powerful zeitgeist.”

This summer, that man was NYT columnist David Brooks. There are some valid points that Mr. Brooks makes, namely the changing media and publishing landscape, the shortening of attention spans, and a society that rewards conformity. However, I would like to propose a solution: the idiomatization of poetry into the vernacular.

As the peak of blackberry season begins to roll away and the time of driving summer fruit in from hundreds of miles away is on the horizon, I reminisce on the warm mornings I spent in my backyard this summer with a bowl of fresh fruit. The most notable (photogenic) of the assortment were the blackberries glistening on the sides of the bowl. But time and time again, I was met with this pattern: sweet, tart, bitter, tart, bitter, sweet, sweet, bitter.

July overwhelms me. It’s abundant in every way, overflowing with flowers and sunlight as well as noise, crowds, and humidity. Have you noticed how quiet winter becomes? I long for it. But this is July, and there’s a lot going on. The internet is thrumming with millions of queries as we all find things to wonder about. Here are a few hot topics for July, per Google Trends. 

I define a walk as moving at an even pace without having both feet off the ground at the same time. Merriam-Webster classifies a walk as “to move along on foot : advance by steps.” The Cambridge Dictionary suggests a walk is “to move along by putting one foot in front of the other, allowing each foot to touch the ground before lifting the next.” People go on walks for all kinds of reasons: curiosity, pleasure, exercise, even religious pilgrimage. Walking is a relationship unique to the individual. Every walk is different, even if the path or routine is the same. It is a process that, whether we are conscious of it or not, involves the whole self: the mental, the emotional, and the physical.

If you’re reading this article, you’re probably (at least a little bit) interested in reading poetry. You might want to spend an hour going to a reading or sitting down with a new collection, but it’s not always possible to fit it into your busy schedule. As an alternative, here are some bite-size ways to fit poetry into your daily life. 

“Find the edges of your body.” K. Iver’s instruction sounded simple. I thought about the faded, spice-red, velvet-like seat underneath me, my back leaning against its smooth, unforgiving wood backrest. The sensation of cool sweatpants falling over my knees and the warm plate of to-go dinner sitting on my lap became increasingly apparent. I stared at K with great intent and curiosity, waiting for their next words.

Though we hope our summer days aren’t cloudy, we’re still spending plenty of time in the digital cloud. In an age of widespread anxiety and unrest, there’s more on our minds than vacation and BBQs and we’re looking to the web for guidance. Here’s a review of June’s trending searches, paired with relevant poems to help us reflect, relax, and think more deeply about this curious life.

Thank you, Poetry Society of NY. I love this crystal ball! What shall we do with it? Let’s envision another world with this crystal ball—one based not on domination and subordination but on collaboration and partnership, compassion and empathy, empathy, empathy.

If, like me, your last attempt to answer your dad’s question, “What’s so great about poetry anyway?” ended in monosyllables and nondescript grunts, maybe it’s time to show rather than tell. Here are five different poems for five different types of dads for those dedicated Father’s Day gift-givers that might shed some light onto what exactly is so great about poetry, while showing him some timely appreciation along the way.