Snooty Cows

It turns out not everybody is wild about poetry

In my office there is a comic strip stuck to the file cabinet with magnets. I clipped it out of the newspaper years ago. It’s wrinkled and discolored but I’ll never throw it away. I kept it because it made me laugh, and also, I suppose, because it stung a bit. It’s a Pearls Before Swine strip, just three little squares. You can see it here, but the conversation goes like this:

Goat: Do you ever think about why we choose to kill certain animals and let others live?

Rat: How do you mean?

Goat: Well, if cows could write poetry, would we still kill them?

Rat: I’d kill them faster… Snooty cows.

I’m a writer, mostly of poetry. I’ve been writing for years but have only just recently started submitting my poems for publication. (No joy yet, but I’ll keep you posted.) Its a scary thing to send one’s creations out into the world, be they kids or poems. Now that my human offspring are both away at college, I’ve started sending my poetry out into the world as well, and just like my children, I worry about them. Will they be successful, liked, appreciated, understood? Unlike my children, they don’t send me frequent texts once they go, or recall themselves often to my mind with charges on the family credit card. They are simply gone into the ether until the rejections roll in, which I know is perfectly normal and to be expected, much like the charges on the credit card.

Maybe it’s strange that I’ve hung onto the “Snooty Cows” comic for so long. I have a fondness for dark humor, no doubt. But it’s more than that. It’s a reminder that many (most?) people don’t read poetry unless it is required of them. And that even people who don’t like poetry much, like Rat, seem to have opinions about it.

Visiting with an acquaintance not long ago, I mentioned being a writer of poetry. His tone shifted from chatty to brusque.

“Do your poems rhyme?” he asked. I had the sense, from the way he posed the question, that my reply would have consequences.

“No,” I said, feeling flustered,“generally not.”

He shot back,“I don’t understand poems that don’t rhyme.”

“Uh…oh…okay,” I said.

I was rescued at this point by my husband, the finest man who ever lived, who frequently rescues me from awkward moments with his artful blend of shrewdness and affability. The conversation was quickly rerouted on a safe but circuitous detour around poetry and we all found ourselves back on the road to cheerful coexistence, albeit with a careful annotation on the map of our acquaintance: “Don’t talk about poems.”

I try not to judge too harshly those who are not lovers of poetry. There’s a lot of cultural baggage that goes along with the reading, writing, and appreciation of poems. There’s a snobbishness associated with poets, like we’re all trying to prove we’re smart enough to write something tricky and confusing that only the very cleverest reader will understand, while also demonstrating our muscular intellect through our deep comprehension of the poetry of others. Snooty cows, indeed.

I do try not to judge, though it makes me sad that so many people feel put off by poetry. To me it is the essence of writing, a potent distillation of words and emotions, ideally a bit surprising, funny, or disorienting. I suppose I’m here because I’d like to make a space to share and talk about poetry - the writing, the process, the things that we choose to write about and the things that clamor for our attention so consistently, and for so long, that eventually we have no choice but to write about them.

I find poetry to be a capricious thing. Sometimes it springs from deep emotions, giving us the trope of the tortured poet, rending his clothes and tearing at his hair in service of his craft and in thrall to his very big and messy feelings. But just as often, if not more so, I find that the inspiration to write a poem presents itself far less dramatically and from entirely mundane thoughts and experiences: the fizz of seltzer in a glass, a snippet of a lyric from a favorite song, or a few words chosen from a random page in a random book, like the piece with which I will leave you - for now. But I’ll be back soon with more poems, and thoughts on poetry. If that sounds good to you, join me. We can be snooty cows together.

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This poem is temporarily unavailable. A link to it will be provided soon. Thanks for your understanding. 

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*The prompt that helped generate this poem a few years ago during April, National Poetry Month: Grab the closest book and turn to page 43. Write down 10 words that catch your eye. Use 7 of the words in a poem. (My words were gunpowder, chills, skirmishing, compass, dishonorable, husbands, feathers.)