Lit Monday: I Hate Poetry, except, well...I like it.

Oh gods, I hate poetry. Well, in more actuality, I hate bad poetry...which is most poetry. But like a good sausage, when it's good it's great, and poetry can really do more than prose when it sets its mind to it. I'm more of a fan of the older stuff, and I'm not talking T.S. Eliot old. I'm talking Dr. Johnson old, which, for most of you here, would probably be the worst thing in the world for you. (Though, I highly recommend Swift's "The Lady's Dressing Room" to everyone. Hilarious.)

I won't go into my problems with contemporary poetry, except to say if your poems are based on varying inflections, just stop right now and become an engineer. I suck at poetry and have switched to politics. I'm less creative, but infinitely less moody. Haha. So in general, this introduction is to show you that I don't like poetry, but I like this poetry. It's mad famous for good reason:

Wild Geese (Mary Oliver)

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
       love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

I have many things I could say in response to this, but my most important is that wild geese are probably really dangerous and bird assholes. The geese I've known have always been assholes, stealing my French fries at various park-like locations.

But second, remember that you are an animal. "Let the soft animal of your body love what it loves." Regardless of what is told to you and how you are expected to act, let yourself fall into its pleasures. Instinct can be a great and powerful tool, and also your downfall if you have a particularly bad one. Following no one's ideals but your own can/should be liberating. Though, I do recommend following the Bill of Rights if it so applies.

Thirdly, "whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination." So many people find the notion of being alone with their own mind a terrifying thing to behold. Just take out the headphones and the smart phone and just fucking think. Don't even eat, jesus. Put your chips and your pretzels and beers away and just stare like a cow for an hour. What do cows think about anyway, when they are satiated?

I think maybe the thing that makes us human is the ability to see how fucking inadequate we are. We can see how we clog our lives, yet, we can't do a thing about it because no matter how hard we try, we can't be those geese.Our cognizance makes us so happy and so miserable at the same time. C'est la vie, truly.

Anyway, I'm musing now, so we can end this. Oliver is a mastersmith of words, and any poem of hers will go far into making you feel better. Or at least better with nature.