Poetry is Just Not My Thing

Even if I admit to being deeply moved by Amanda Gorman’s The Hill We Climb, delivered with such stirring passion at President Biden’s inauguration, poems are still not my thing.

And even if I have a favorite poem that I’ll read again and again, specifically The Calf-Path by Sam Foss, poetry does not regularly call me to read or write in any of its forms.

Counting syllables to create a meaningful haiku does not feel like fun. Even if I wanted to write more ambitious poems, I’d have to go back and learn the basics all over again. Any little thing I might have learned from my college class has long ago been deleted from memory.

For me, National Poetry Month is less exciting than some of the other national month options. Did you know that April is also National Fresh Celery Month? I thought not. I love celery, especially with cream cheese. Or peanut butter.

April is also National Humor Month. Humor has carried me through the last year via television comedy and the antics of my cat and dog. I’m even writing humor these days (in a cozy mystery).

But back to poetry. I tried to write a few poems way back in the old days. They were terrible. I still have them in my box of unpublishable stuff to remind me not to do that ever again.

Those who find joy in reading and writing poetry are special people. A few of my friends have been writing poems for many years. They know what they’re doing, and they do it well enough to get published.

I’ll be satisfied if I can occasionally write prose lyrically. But it won’t be poetry. For me, April will have to remain more about fresh celery and humor.

 

Pat (Patricia) Stoltey is the author of four novels published by Five Star/Cengage: two amateur sleuth, one thriller that was a finalist for a Colorado Book Award in 2015, and the historical mystery Wishing Caswell Dead (December 20, 2017), a finalist for the 2018 Colorado Book Awards. This novel is now available in a large print edition, ebook and trade paperback. Her short story, “Good Work for a Girl,” appeared in the Five Star Anthology, The Spoilt Quilt and Other Frontier Stories: Pioneering Women of the West, released in November 2019.

Pat lives in Northern Colorado with her husband Bill, Scottish Terrier Sassy, and brown tabby Katie Cat.

You can learn more about Pat at her website/blog, on Facebook, and Twitter. She was interviewed for the Colorado Sun’s SunLit feature that you can find at the Colorado Sun website.