Lately, in an effort to not think about politics and the state of things, at least in the morning, I’ve taken to listening to the poetry podcast, The Slowdown, hosted by Ada Limon. It’s not a new show — for awhile it was hosted by Tracy K. Smith — but for whatever reason it has recently pulled me in to the point where it is nearly as essential as coffee.
The format is simple: Ada Limon picks a poem and introduces it with a short essay. The poems are invariably great, but it is the essays that pull me in and I am always a little (embarrassingly) disappointed when she shifts from talking to reciting. It got me thinking about poetry in my life. I want to love it much more than I actually do. I have shelves of books from Wordsworth to Rilke to Adrienne Rich to Billy Collins to Ada Limon and Tracy K. Smith. I read it often, but it does not seep into my bones the way I want it to. My mind wanders. Maybe I’m just too impatient, always looking for plot. I assumed I was always that way.
Recently though, I found a box of books from my childhood home. There was some James Michener, some Vonnegut, a stack of books from my high school class on dystopian literature which now seems quite relevant. There was also a lot of poetry. And here’s the thing: the books were dog-eared, underlined; there were notes in the margins and stars next to the titles I loved best. I had circled words I loved.
What happened? It is as if poetry was a youthful dalliance and now we broke up, or at least settled into a more cordial relationship. I’ve grown out of a lot of bad habits — thumb-sucking, using pretentious words in an effort to impress people, collecting baseball hats. Did I grow out of poetry?
I can only hope that I somehow cycle back to it. That someday soon I crave it again, a craving more along the lines of sweets than the vegetables my body knows are good for it.
Kate Staples 