Zombies and Unicorns: Talking about Poetry

I’ve been fully vaccinated for about six weeks and I’ve made a kind of re-entry resolution for myself: to stop hedging around the question “so what do you do?”

In pre-Covid times, I often answered this question with “I’m a grad student” (I was back then; defending my PhD was one of my last in-person gatherings) or “I teach the first-year composition class at the university”. These were true answers, but they were also ways to avoid the little pause that tends to follow the statement “I’m a poet”. They were attempts to keep the rug and trap door securely in place over the wild creative void, to keep the conversation safely in the realm of small talk. Kind of silly, because I don’t particularly like small talk. But I also don’t like stirring things up or putting myself on the spot.

And saying the words, “I’m a poet and I teach creative writing” is like walking through the door with a unicorn. People react.

Some people react with “oh cool, what do you write about?” They are usually surprised when I say “submarines, time machines, telegraphs, and automobiles”, rather than “wildflowers and moonbeams”.  But then we can have an interesting conversation about how I like to use poetry to ask big questions about how we live with technology, and about how poetry can be haunting as well as delightful. My unicorn is not all stardust and sparkles. It has sharp teeth. Sometimes it wants to eat your cellphone.

Other people react with “I don’t get poetry”. Or “poetry isn’t my thing”.  Sometimes they say this resentfully. More often they say it wistfully, like what they really mean is “I wish I got poetry” (sometimes they even tell me how they struggled with “themes and metaphors and stuff” in high school English).

The truly resentful don’t like poetry because it can’t really be quantified and it isn’t exactly an MVP in our capitalist economy; they suspect poetry is full of uncertainty and deep feelings and they want nothing to do with it. There’s not much I can say to them except, “okay, I guess we view the world differently.” They don’t want to meet unicorns.

But the wistful break my heart a little. I think they know on some level that poetry would enrich their lives, but they feel cut off from the possibilities of playing with words or taking pleasure in sounds and images. Having learned to succeed in the world of standardized tests and business memos, they’ve stopped knowing themselves as creative beings. (Most kids don’t even have to think of themselves as creative, they simply imagine and create as modes of experiencing the world.) Maybe they had to write a thematic analysis paper in high school and picked up the idea that there is some correct method for understanding a poem—and the fear of ‘getting it wrong’ has gotten in the way of their ability to enjoy reading one. Maybe they find it a little scary to abandon the marked trail of logic and commonsense, even though they sense that great discoveries (maybe even their own unicorn) wait elsewhere in the woods. Whether a school-system or a workplace has slammed the door shut or whether they’ve shut it themselves, they’ve decided that the door to poetry is closed to them.  

It isn’t locked though. As language-wielding animals, all of us ‘get’ poetry. We all have the capacity to play with words, to feel our way toward meaning or to speak our way toward feeling. In some ways, the pandemic has cracked the door by giving everyone a heaping dose of uncertainty and a mixed bag of emotions, forcing us to slow down and sit with all it. A lot of people have realized they want to make a little more space in their lives for joy and contemplation and creativity—all things that poetry can bring us, whether we are reading it or writing it.

So, in this moment of collective rediscovery, I’m not ducking the question “what do you do?”. When I meet new people, I’m introducing myself as a real live poet (and poetry coach) and starting conversations about poems, because I believe that poetry is for everyone, that everyone can get something out of poetry.  I’m engaging this way because I want to live in a world with more words and more voices. (Also, this way I get to meet other people’s music and dance and photography unicorns.)

I’m trying to open the door wide for people who feel unsure about this whole poetry thing and for people who want to live a little more creatively. I’m trying to let in all the unicorns. I’m inviting people to try new poems (in case the Shakespeare they read in high school just wasn’t their favorite poetry flavor) and to try reading them aloud. I’m sharing poems I love, poems that remind me what poetry is for, and poems that might expand our ideas about what a poem is supposed to say.

Here are three poems that I’ve been sharing lately as invitations to the world of poetry:

Burlee Vang’s “To Live in the Zombie Apocalypse” (some poems double as survival guides)

Ada Limón’s “How to Triumph Like a Girl” (if I could time travel, I would go back and tape a copy in my high school locker)

January Gill O’Neill’s “How to Love” (for me, this one speaks powerfully to 2021, to the tenderness and challenge of relearning trust)

This is obviously a short list. I’d love to hear your favorite poetry recommendations—your old standbys and the ones you find yourself reaching for in this strange new moment.

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