Poetry on Poetry

I'm not going to do much today--I don't feel all that well. My poem for today is "'Tis an Art," which I wrote in either my junior or senior year of high school. During those years I slightly lost my mind...I applied myself to all the wrong things. I find that many talented people destroy themselves, which I suppose inspired this piece.

‘Tis an Art
On my body crawls raging stings,
starting from my abdomen up to my scalp:
tingle, tingle
and it feels so well.
I almost made the etches from head to toe,
peeling off the thickened layers of flesh.
Here I am, a sculpture all on my own.
A pink carved pumpkin,
and ‘tis an art.

The calcium column reflected in the cabinet mirror,
follow its path downward:
curved lanes towards the bones of my own design.
The elastic dip of empty lining, the
sharp southern peaks poking out of denim.
And there is no redemption in this craft.
Reminding the unruly physical that it’s mine
to cut away at will.
And ‘tis an art.

Misplaced creativity.
And ‘tis an art.

Billy Collins is probably the most popular American poet since Allen Ginsberg. He served as US Poet Laureate until a couple of years ago. He's known for his colloquial style, which I quite enjoy. I respect the elevated style of T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, but thoroughly relate to and enjoy more "understated" poets like Collins. I believe it's harder to say something meaningful in colloquial language than in academic language. This poem of his deals with the process of literary analysis, which many MANY people overdo. Though a poem always contains more than what is on the page, many students look for what is simply not there (a girl in my Intro to Honors English class last semester saw democracy in "The Red Wheelbarrow"...) Anyway, here's his hilarious (and frustrating) poem on interpretation, "Introduction to Poetry."

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.