in seclusion

I think I'm past halfway. Through Emily Dickinson's Complete Poems. I haven't read any in months. I'll get back to it. There are Dickinson poems I really like. But mostly she's not a poet that makes poetry for me. I'm not sure why she's so popular, frankly. She's difficult. Isn't the reason nobody buys poetry that it's difficult?

There are discussions that fizz up ever new on poetry discussion boards. Great poets. Are there any today? Poetry workshops. Are they destroying poetry? Obscurity. The reason nobody buys poetry?

People seem to have violent opinions on this shit. Great poets. Are there such things? If so, so what? If you trust other people to decide for you what's great read the anthologies that claim to compile it. Or follow the reading lists of the big critics. Harold Bloom. Your English teacher. Some guy on the web. If you want to figure it out for yourself ... there's a lot of poetry out there. Poetry workshops? In college I liked taking a workshop because I liked to get credit for what I would be doing anyway; plus it was nice to be in a room full of people who cared about poetry. Obscurity. I've discovered I like to present myself before the poem and be with it. I get something or nothing and I move on. If I really like the poem, want it available for repeat visits, I often copy it out. I have four loose leaf binders full of poems I've copied out. I've copied out a few Dickinson. I've copied out poems by Clark Coolidge and Wang Ping and Russell Edson and Julia Vinograd and Paul Hoover and Tim Donnelly and Lawrence Raab and Ronald Koertge and blah blah blah. I like to read poetries in translation. Poets I know only from various English versions have become favorites -- Sappho, Issa. I pounce on any new Sappho or Issa translations.

I'm reading The Best of The Prose Poem: An International Journal, a selection by Peter Johnson from his magazine. Not impressed. What else to say? There's a lot of that if you read poetry. It tries harder. It tries so hard.