You know when poetry becomes pointless?
That's a fake question.
Poetry is pointless almost by definition. It doesn't do anything, it makes nothing happen. It's not designed to . . . vive la poesie!
But we convince ourselves otherwise, each time we sit down to write a poem. This time, by God, my poem is going to make something happen, Auden be damned. We want to believe there's a point to the poems we pour ourselves into: we're setting the world straight again; we're making sense of our past; we're exposing all kind of hypocrisy and foolishness; we're making something beautiful and valuable for all that.
Ach! I used to write poetry to get laid. Now that's a good use of it! And now I'm in crisis. A poetry crisis. I've talked my way there, coordinated and managed my way there. I've blogged my way there. I've cast myself as a Poetry Expert . . . and lost the thread of it all.
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What's driving this poetry crisis is the W@1 weekly discussion group I've led for the past five years. It's all about the administration now -- the so-called assignments, the classroom, the collated files of poems, the paper shuffling.
(Here's a piece of advice for you poetry MFA candidates out there who hope to grab a cushy sinecure at Colby College or the Iowa Writer's Workshop someday: stop. Think. Imagine what you're courting: a life of administrative dolor. Go get a job in finance or engineering or the law, and write poetry on the side.)
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So. Time to make a change. Less matter, more song. Pointless as I can make it.
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