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Currently Reading: Kafka on the Shore By Haruki Murakami

You know, I did a little poetry writing today. I don't do it very often and usually they're to CC but a situation came up that required a little bit of verse. As I was writing it, I was reminded of a discussion I had with a group of "poets" while I was in college (note that one of them actually went on to get a PhD in poetry). The discussion went something like this:

Bear: Man, poetry really sucks these days. All blank verse, free verse, whatever they want to call it. I mean, what the hell is that? There's no rhyme, no meter, no rules, nothing.

Poet: BOO! You suck! You don't know what you're talking about! Modern poetry is great! Long live modern poetry! You're just too stupid not to understand it!

Bear: Really? Then tell me, what exactly is the difference between this free verse stuff and normal, emotive prose chopped off so it looks like a poem?

Poet: (silence) Well if you don't know the difference maybe you should change your major to something else because every English major should know what the difference is!

Bear: Mmhmm, I've avoided poetry classes on purpose. You took all of them. Please enlighten me.

Poet: BOO! You suck! You don't know what you're talking about!

Ok, obviously I'm paraphrasing there and I did do some selective editing. There were profanities involved on both sides. Never did get an answer out of any of the poets about it though. Even more shocking was learning that the PhD poet never really studied much poetry at all and didn't know many of the major, classic poets. And I'm not talking about obscure people here either. I'm talking about Walt Whitman, Blake, Pope, Dunn. Those guys (if you're an English major you know all of em). Ok, in all fairness though she was VERY well versed in the anti-male, feminist poetry of the 80's and she seemed to know quite a bit about the Morbid poets like Sylvia Plath. I assumed then that the degree covered more of the FORMS of poetry, basic styles, different types, but there again I meat with blank expression when I mentioned iambic pentameter. I mean, come ONE you gotta know that one if you have a poetry degree.

Sad to say that now that person is actually teaching a whole new generation of future English majors to hate poetry. The few who actually ENJOY such classes will come away thinking that everything in literature is relative to what the reader thinks (forget what the author MEANT) and that one should not criticize the works of a poet. Poets are genius. If you do not LIKE a poem, it is simply because you're too stupid to understand their work.

I have a two word response to people like that. It comes from Old German and has been a part of the English language for a LONG time. The first word rhymes with duck :-)