Poetic Medicine.

Can you write about poetry without questioning the form itself? Can you talk about poetry without stirring a barrel full of opinions, emotions, prejudices, passions?

Even today, when asking myself about poetry, there is a faint, feeble echo of a no, noo, nooo,.... At the same time I can hear my own vocal cords singing YES, YES, YES with a loud, clear voice.

I avoided the poetry assignments at school. There was something about the word “poetry analysis” that put me off. It seemed like an enormous task, like doing the dishes, or solving a mathematical riddle.

Then one day, when school was just a memory, a poem came knocking on my door. It was not one of those poems that shakes the earth with revolutionary truths about man and spirit and heaven and hell. This was a poem that wiped her feet before entering, a poem that demanded nothing of me, other than I noticed she was there.

Did William Carlos Williams write this poem on one of his prescription pads? I have no idea. Other than it worked as a wonder cure for me and my apprehension about poetry.


so much depends
upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens.