A Few Thoughts on National Poetry Month

It's not as if I suddenly decide to read it because of some artificial designation--poetry provides my very sustenance throughout the year--but if saying April is National Poetry Month encourages a few non-poetry readers (i.e., everybody else) to at least acknowledge its existence & maybe even read a poet who isn't dead or named Jewel, then yippee.

What's with its unpopularity?  You'd think with the general public's seemingly insatiable hunger for incredibly moronic crap, folks would gobble many of today's poets right up!  Oh, but I kid poetry & its self-congratulatory clique of smarmitude 1) because I love & 2) because it's true.

If boring inanity isn't going to move poetry off the shelves, you might think the Great Guardians at the Gates of Poetry would look for something different, perhaps even enlightening.  Sadly, unless you have copies of my books--if not, plenty remain available for purchase--you probably won't be reading me.  In the past few years, I've published maybe ten poems.  I can't seem to give my stuff away, which is, after all, what I do most of the time with poetry.  Especially irksome is the kind of tripe that gets published instead.  So fuck all y'all & you know who you are.

From this indignity, however, an obvious question springs to mind:  Is there a correlation between my near anonymity & poetry's lack of readership?

Naturally, I'm not saying--I'm just saying . . .

Comments

Riley said…
As the great Dorothy Parker once almost said, Readers seldom make passes / At poets who wear glasses. Have you considered contacts or Lasik surgery?
Matt Morris said…
Good question, but contacts bug me & I doubt my insurance covers Lasik surgery since I don't have insurance.
Matt Morris said…
Hey, this isn't the you-can-catch-more-flies-with-sugar-than-with- vinegar thing, is it?