Why is it good things, like bad things, always come out of the blue? It always makes me feel ill-prepared, in some way. Like I haven’t been paying attention to the signals. But I am grateful. Always.

I don’t understand some of the intolerance I read in books of essays and blogs towards poetry different than one’s own. Poetry does not have to be all one thing or the other. I’ve never, in all the years I’ve spent reading, studying, writing poetry thought to myself: “All other writers should write like me; otherwise, they are bad writers. I know the true way and everyone else is on the outdated/outmoded/too conservative/too experimental path.” Whether you write plain-spoken narrative, curvilinear lyric, Shakespearian sonnets, or some experimental-explosion or surreal prose poem, you are all welcome to the house of poetry. Anyone who labels “the other side” – or even claims there is an “other side” – I just don’t understand it. Why is it not all right to be avant-garde, lyric-narrative, stream-of-consciousness, whatever a person wants to be etc? Why must Ron Silliman paint a big broad box called “School of Quietude” and lump everyone who doesn’t write like he does into it? Why all the snide remarks about the “other?” Donald Hall does it too. “McPoems written by MFA students are bad; therefore, implicitly, I am good.” Fights about schools of poetry – is this a guy thing? Tell me what you think. Because I see it a lot in men’s blogs and men’s essays.
I have a stack of books by my bed, books I love – by writers who write different ways about different subject matters. Some are books from different countries, from people who speak other languages, people with different backgrounds and heritages and ways of speaking. How can embracing the diversity which is the world of letters be bad? Bad for my soul, bad for writing, bad for the brain and body? Yes, there will always be boring, poorly written poetry, or just poetry that doesn’t move or excite you. But how do you know for sure which books these will be, just by looking at the groups of people the author hangs out with, or the publisher, or the way the words are arranged on the page?
I love getting review copies because maybe one book, a book I might not have picked up on my own, by turning to it I will turn a key in my brain and something new will be brought in. Am I the only poet that thinks this way? It’s always a disappointment when you don’t connect with a person’s collection, but on the other hand, what a wonderful suprise when you connect with someone you didn’t expect! What a shame to miss out on a wonderful poet because of some ridiculous prejudice, right?
That is my rant of the day. A rant of open-mindedness, of embrace, of, dare I say it, loving your (poetry) neighbor. That is all. End rant.