7.1.24 – Gawn Fishin’

I’ve been reading… poetry. There I’ve said it. The very word repels – like dogshit – we’re sorry we stepped close. Some of you may read it – a show of hands – but do you discuss it in company? Maybe in an esoteric reading group that gathers online from far and wide: the Internet is a genius at convening coteries. But in casual conversation – with a friend or neighbor, say? Just uttering the word marks one as old hat, a Miss Havisham trapped in yesteryear – unless one’s deploying it to flatter: “her key lime pie was pure poetry!”

In college and for maybe a decade after, I dreamed of being a poet. That’s how old I am. I wasn’t foolhardy enough to risk it as a career – I longed both to eat and shine – but how about “on the side”, like Wallace Stevens, an insurance executive nine to five, or my mentor Robert Penn Warren, best-selling novelist, professor, person of letters? I still scribble a poem occasionally, the way I sneak a second Reese’s peanut butter cup, because I can’t help myself …