My life as a poet

And of course I didn't know it!
In high school, we had a sub for a large portion of junior year, when the teacher had a baby and went on maternity leave. Our sub was a hippy chick. She had the obligitory black stringy hair with a plethora of split ends and grey (because dying wouldn't be natural, doncha know), wore beaded earrings and usually was dressed in flowing crinkly skirty things. In the early 80's this was the height of 70's retro, and not really done. I thought that she was basically an idiot. I had my reasons. Not the least of them was her absolute adoration for A.B. Guthrie Jr.'s The Big Sky. I really hated that book. I hated all cowboy crap at that point in my life. I didn't embrace that part of the MT experience for 20 more years at least, and despised everything that I saw as a reminder of being stuck in a hick outpost.

So poetry. We had a section on Walt Whitman. I really thought that poetry was stupid. Especially nature poetry. And Walt Whitman was pretty stupid in my book, too. She didn't bother to give any background on who old Walt was, and his shall we say, counter-culture lifestyle. Nope. Just the earth-mama schtick.

She assigned us a writing thing. We were supposed to write poetry. I had gone from straight A's in English to strong B's and C's under this woman. Because I thought she was stupid, and didn't hide it well. So I decided to fuck with her mind. I wrote a poem that I based on a Whitman one, for structure. I played with the whole word thing, and made it all about nature. It was total bullshit. I knew it, and figured that she would know it too, and that I would get the requisite C.

Nope. She was rhapsodic in her praise. She thought that I had a true calling. It made me kind of ill. I had really put effort into a bunch of the other papers, and also thought that having an opinion about a book was a good thing. Even if it wasn't her opinion. So here she was, praising to high heaven this total crap poem that I pulled out of my ass, and it really pissed me off. Of course, I got an A. And she left not long later. And I settled down and did well for the rest of the year, and tried to shake her off as an abberation.

But the poem. Damn. I wish that I had kept it- just to see what I think about it today. But I didn't keep any of that crap- and dumped all of my college papers about 10 years ago too. Toting around a box of old papers and blue books just seemed too sad.

So I decided at that point that poetry was bullshit. And upon meeting a couple of poets in particular (one we'll call the cat-killer, and the other we'll call crazy-lady) I figured that it was all fine and dandy to avoid poetry for the duration.

Then came Kenga's job for the Creative Writing department, and exposure to non-crazy, non-cat-killing poets. And I heard a reading of some of Tony Hoagland's poems. And our friend Scott shared his poems with us. The bias was blown. The blush was back on the rose, which is in fact, a rose. And maybe some day, I'll write a poem that doesn't sound like a re-tread Journey lyric. Just don't hold your breath, though.