. . . NO ALREADY IDENTIFIED POETS ALLOWED . . .
An essay to find the poetry
and the new poets
by Jennifer Bosveld
American culture is dulled at every turn with corporate and media attempts that would
homogenize us. Are you too whistling "...the softer side of Sears?" Making
Clinton jokes by the office water cooler? Do your kids watch Barneybland and leap all over
the backyard pretending to be this year's action figures? Surely, no one who would visit
the Pudding House website would own a Beanie Baby let alone 12 or 3200 of them!
Generally, the segment of the American public that gets reported on, that works jobs where
we can get to you, that lives at censused addresses, and that responds to sidewalk
surveys, call-in talk shows, and chatrooms, ...we're (now this is the royal we you
know)...we're eating at the same restaurants, buying best-seller-marketed books from the
media monopoly, and lately we're all defining politics with even more scandal-influenced
skepticism than ever before. We're whipped up (maybe even beat up) by the darker side of
TV, radio, news, entertainment, all kinds of publishing that appears to be driving a
significant amount of personal experiences and attitudes. In all this grayness, where is
that which will save us?
I think it exists. And I think YOU are one of the millions of "saviors". Even in
the midst of what appears to be the mundane there are mavericks kicking their legs, there
are people in the chorus ready to sing their own songs solo. Some of that is where the
poetry is. Some of that could be where our answers are. Even within what we put down.
There is redeeming value in a great deal of television if we're not so turned off by
what's rotten that we don't watch. There is much to celebrate in the city, in movies,
sidewalk conversation, the downtown buzz, that great new song you just heard, the dance.
And we can always sit on the front porch.
If you don't have a front porch, find a friend who has one. Not a back deck or patio that
hides you from your brothers and sisters coming and going. You need a front porch
sometimes, a place that sits you down out there where the people are. Where you can notice
what's happenin'. Where you can meet somebody walking down to the convenience store and
wave 'em up, say, "Hi, how are ya? Why don't you come on up on your way back?"
And they just might. They do here.
Come sit by our pool at 81 Shadymere Lane. Even if I'm not home, just bring your
poetSelf on over, a notebook and pen, and take notes. There's poetry here. Say what? Yeah,
poetry. That stuff you've never gotten close to because you "don't understand that
crap" or you think you're just not interested. You know, the only thing you're saying
no to is yourself.
Your poetSelf is starving for attention, brother. And I can always use another brother.
Listen, . . . hear that? Something gray IS trying... is TRYING and trying to tell you
something.
There's poetry in your life all over the place. There's poetry in the basement and in the
back seat floor of your car. There's poetry in everything we grumble about and everything
we forget to praise. There's poetry in your kids. In everything they do. Help THEM find it
in themselves. There's poetry in your diet, in your job no matter how much you hate it and
probably especially if you hate it. There's poetry in every place where somebody says
"I'm bored." And it could be a place we'd long to see again 40 years from now.
You can't imagine that? Come on, you CAN imagine. Imagine!
The poet Ray Cosseboom knew.
THE LITTLE PURRS
I was just sitting on our old gray porch that day,
waiting for the mail,
and a girl walked by with a small kitten in her arms.
A grasshopper that jumped took that day with it.
And now I wonder about that old gray porch:
the way it hopped by.
Some purr I couldn't understand for years
has been in the traffic.
That day was curled up in the girl's arms.
Every hop another address,
it's the little purrs that matter.
They sat there like that old gray porch
for years unnoticed.
Then they disappear.
And I have learned to wait for them to come back.
They live in a world that loves to hop.
Something gray is always trying to tell us something.
--RAY COSSEBOOM
First appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, 1975
permission granted by the author for use by
Pudding House Publications; reprinted in
Pudding Magazine, 1980.
Today YOU are acting on and surrounded by the stuff that poetry is made of. You can be the
one to recognize it. You have a poetSelf capable of shoving past the gray curtain of
boredom or disbelief or apathy and into a magnificent world of detail worthy of
celebration. Write it for us. Become one of us. Something gray is ALWAYS always always
always trying to tell us something.
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