Odds are, you don’t read poetry.
Or at least, you don’t read modern poetry–maybe, like me, you like Whitman, or maybe you don’t know who Whitman is. Maybe your last contact with poetry was your high school English teacher forcing Shakespeare’s sonnets on you.
As a poet, I have to tell you that this troubles me.
It’s nearly impossible for a poet in America to make a living by writing–unless, of course, you’re Maya Angelou, and you have your own line of decorative housewares at Hallmark. That would help, I imagine. The rest of us have no such luck. If we’re lucky, we publish a few poems a year in reputable magazines, and maybe eventually we cobble together enough poems to send out a publishable manuscript. Eventually, maybe that manuscript wins a prize, and is published–and then you’re sitting around your house with boxes of books that you can’t move because, oh yes, no one reads modern poetry.
No one reads modern poetry in America, at least. Some time after the Beat poets finger-snapped their way in and out, Americans stopped reading poems. The poets didn’t go away, and no, modern poetry doesn’t usually rhyme and is almost never written in iambic pentameter. If your first thought of poetry is a stuffy Romantic poet waxing lyrical on a bluebird, you’re out of date.
So I–the silly poet who likes to make jewelry and watch science fiction–am going to start recommending books to you, the great void, once a week. I’ll try to have them up on Monday nights, but I’m a poet, and thus I am flighty.
This week I’d like to recommend to you Pimone Triplett’s first book, Ruining the Picture. If you’ve been away from poetry for a while, this is a great place to jump on in. Triplett colorfully weaves from family memories to Greek mythology, and back again. And if the phrase “Greek mythology” is turning you off, think again–Triplett doesn’t just tell you what happened, she reimagines it. Take this book in small doses, with a hot cup of tea, and get drawn into a world of mosaic artwork mirroring memory. You’ll enter the psyche of Persephone, pomegranate-eater. You will find poems that are beautiful but not flowery, and deep, yet inviting enough to welcome even the most errant sheep back to the fold.
Come on back to the world of poetry; it’s warm here, and we have cake.
Ruining the Picture, by Pimone Triplett. Check it out.
