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Why Do You Write Poetry?
Why choose a narrative the world might not appreciate?
One of my guilty pleasures has become to walk the book aisles of my local Target just to see what big stories are making enough of a splash to be featured in the superstore. Plus, who doesn’t love a store where you can browse through books in one section and then walk to the other end of the store just to pick out your favorite candy as a welcome treat? (But I digress.)
I look through the bestsellers, the movers-and-shakers, and all those other books destined to live out their lives on someone’s coffee table or in a living room bookcase. These are often the books you wouldn’t be ashamed to have lying out in the open. A visitor to your home could pick up one of these books and skim through it before the book inevitably becomes a talking point all its own.
“Oh,” someone might say, “you have so-and-so’s latest. I’ve been meaning to read this.” And off you go on a tangent, perhaps gushing in such a way that definitely validates the book’s place in a commonly visited store.
For me, though, lately I’ve been looking at the poetry collections that my local Target curates. The writers are the Rupi Kaurs of the moment, poets who have gained their legs via platforms like Twitter and Instagram. I press my fingertips lightly to these collections’…
