National Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month.  I don't get much opportunity to talk about poetry except when I take the initiative -- and except in the poetry class I've been taking since the beginning of February -- which has been a bit like turning on a tap.  I've been writing poems quickly and easily, quite a variety -- it seems I have no style or voice or my own.  But this little kick in the pants impetus means I may have to  write until I do find my own way -- although, I'll admit I've always used the excuse of "I'm a Gemini and we are drawn this way and that -- fickle, flighty, some say" so don't expect me to be consistent.

'nuf said -- here is a poem I found in one of Garrison Keeler's anthologies.  I give it to my writing class -- they usually don't know whether to laugh or groan. It's by Lisa Colt.

My teacher says
You've got to stink first.

I tell her I don't have time to stink.
At 64 years old
I go directly to perfection
Or I go nowhere.

Perfecttion is nowhere,
she says, so stink.
Stink like a beginner
Stink like deaying flesh
And old blood.
She says,
I know a woman who's eighty-six
Last year she learned to dive.