Why I Don’t Write Serious Poetry
I don’t write serious poetry
because I am afraid I’ll be too
sentimental. Ted Kooser
would cringe at the sight of my verse.
I wear my heart on a sleeve
and speak only in clichés
because I’m far too emotional
to put anything the right way.
I don’t write serious poetry
because I am afraid I’ll have nothing
to say. I am the product of white picket fences
and all advantages granted.
I know we’re all the center
of our own Universe, but
my Universe has a much narrower
scope than it should.
I don’t write serious poetry
because I’m afraid that it’ll be
terrible. And nothing is worse
than reading bad literature.
I’d rather never try and never know
than take the blow to my ego
by discovering I’m not clever
enough to write a good poem.
I don’t write serious poetry
because I’m afraid I won’t be
original. All I’m doing is re-hashing
ideas that others have said better before.
I can’t craft a metaphor
and have I mentioned my
issue with abusing
clichés?
I don’t write serious poetry
because I think what I write is
still prose. I can’t rhyme
and there’s semblance of a meter.
My poems are sentences that
have been thought about
for an amount of time substantially
greater than I usually do.
I don’t write serious poetry
because this is what I end up
with. It’s sad, but true;
this is hardly Wordsworthian.
But I did my best for a semester
and that’s all I could ask for.
Because even if it wasn’t serious,
everything I wrote was serious to me.
Comments
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Ariel on 12.06.2012
I enjoyed this quite a bit. It’s not often that writing a poem about, well, writing a poem works, but I feel that it comes through here to an extent.
My prime complete would be the fact that I find this to be too long. You get the idea across by the fourth stanza or so, yet continue to meander on, causing the poem to shed most of its wit and repeat itself.