Music Babble

And no, not just the Dylan fanatics who buy a selected volume of Rimbaud and call it a day. I mean, it's the closest literary form to music. Yeah, you gotta get used to it- sorta like the reading equivalent of getting into jazz (yeah I'm being stoney and inarticulate but you know what I mean). But once you do, it's deeply rewarding and lots of fun to revisit- like with music, I tend to notice/appreciate new elements each time.

Problem is, it's assigned in school and folks are assigned the wrong stuff. If I'd been assigned Whitman and Pound in school, I'd gravitate towards dusty old limeys just like Tabs (Eliot has clearly held up far better than those other 2 overrated members of the holy modernist poetry triumvirate).

But actually for most folks, regardless of what they were assigned in school, poetry simply isn't on their radar. They never think about it as anything worth investigating and that's a damn shame. I love rereading old favorites every night before bed in a half conscious state- trips me out and helps me sleep.

As poetry geek Patti Smith points out, one of the main misconceptions about poetry is that you have to understand *everything* about a poem in order to enjoy it. That seems to be a hump a lot of folks have trouble getting over. I love having multiple impressions of a poem, especially when returning to it after some time has passed.