Friday, February 02, 2007

the charms of the written word

In part because today is a celebration of poetry, and in part because I simply cannot have Harry Potter's pelvis at the top of my blog any longer:

A woman I know who's quite blunt
Had a bear trap installed in her...
Oh, you know. It's a base, vernacular term for "vagina"

- David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day

I've never been a big poetry fan. It's too stifling and/or pretentious for me. Whenever I read poetry or, God forbid, attempt to write it, I feel like I'm playing the part of "someone who reads poetry." Kind of like that scene in Cruel Intentions where Reese Witherspoon's pristine, virginal character is wearing a teeny tiny skirt and yet is posed sitting on a blanket under a sun-dappled tree, reading from a leather-bound book and sitting up with impossibly good posture, as if so full of self-righteousness that she is physically unable to slouch. That is the kind of girl I picture myself aping when I read poetry.

Give me the amateur charms of messy, verbose prose any old day.

3 comments:

Lucy said...

I hear you.

My poem last year was:

My beard grows to my toes
I never wears no clothes
I wraps my hair
Around my bare
and down the road I goes

Still works for me.

Ar-Jew-Tino said...

I used to like poetry in college. Then, one day, I came to the realization that verse is probably just one big practical joke and we've all been had.

Anonymous said...

EJ! Wow! It was so much fun to meet you! I'm going to use as many exclamation points as I can to illustrate how awesome it was! I see good things ahead! !!!!!!!!!!!