“Poetry” as a word connotes stuffiness, outdated technique, and prestigious old white men who make a living off of closing their doors in your face. Talking to a girl in my class, she explained how she felt that the concept of poetry inherently came with a feeling of superiority. To her, there was a distinctly unlikeable vibe to anyone who sits down with the thought “I am going to write poetry”.
Her view is understandable, particularly when we reflect on the kinds of poems forced on us in traditional K-12 schooling. Having poetry shoved down your throat alienates you from the content itself. We are forced to identify stem, seed, peel, juice when it could be infinitely more impactful just to recognise the orange. Academic dissection can make poetry feel removed. We realise that it is not written by us for us, it is irrelevant to reality and it always has a right answer.
No one really knows how to define poetry, but it is easy to dislike the rigid construct forced on us in childhood. Older now, we see it is radical to be vulgar and grammatically incorrect, to defy what stuffy old white men have decreed it must be. Poetry doesn’t need to be lauded by the critics or heavy with immensely talented figurative language. Perhaps you could define poetry as connection, connection that transcends punctuation and conventionalism and even writing itself. And are we not of interest to each other?
Poetry is in the notes app, or on the walls of the subway, in overheard conversations and whoever is singing in the kitchen.
You make it without meaning to and your every stanza reminds the world that you are within it,
When you give away an orange slice, or when you hold up the orange and say “orange”
And you are not sorry about the coldness of your feet in bed,
Or for the scene on the bathroom floor, or that we ever lived here
You feel that the twilight hours break on your skin delicately
And find that maybe you could pick the paper up