Why Poetry

After a somewhat mundane day (funny how days that involve packing are often also somewhat depressing), I come to learn my blog has been blessed with a poem (Thanks, Peter!), and this got me to thinking. . .

Somehow poetry has acquired an image of snobbery, of unattainability, of. . . intellectualism in a negative sense. So, what do we do? Well, I don't know about you, but I grew up a little bit afraid of poetry, because it was a distant, unreal thing by mythical creatures we call poets.

Well, that's simply not true, unless I have been fooled all along and the world's poets are secretly faeries (I wish!). By reading each other's poetry, we enter into reality--of the specific, the concrete, the personal, the nitty gritty, the language, the politics, the passion and compassion of another human being. I'm still afraid of poetry, but because I'm afraid of who I will meet and no longer be able to think of as merely an idea, what images I will face, and what questions I may have to consider.

Now I'm getting preachy, and that has to stop. And I have to finish packing.