My Trouble with Poetry

(Taken from http://theodysseyonline.com/montclair-state/easy-steps-overcome-writers-block/335202)

Lately, I’ve been reading Billy Collins’ Aimless Love, a collection of new and selected poems. Thumbing through, a poem or two a day, I came across one of my old friends: “The Trouble with Poetry” from the collection of the same title (2005). The trouble with poetry, I re-realized, is exactly what Mr. Collins says it is—it urges me to write poetry. It doesn’t have to be, nor will it ever be in most cases, good poetry. I haven’t really written a decent poem for a while. Some of you may question whether I’ve ever written a decent poem, but I digress. Last week I attended a literacy conference, which included a smattering of sessions on poetry, performance, and instruction by educator poets Georgia Heard and Brod Bagert. Interacting with them just sprayed lighter fluid onto my ardor to write poetry.

However, and I must add this however in here, the trouble with writing poetry for me right now is time. I have no time to watch out any window. Even across the hall from my classroom, the broad glass panes streaked with bird droppings and hard water stains fail to call to me. I have no time to invite the muses over for tea or for a cup o’ Joe or Jack or whatever it is they’re drinking these days. No dainties or doilies or even paper napkins holding store brand excuses for cookies and flavored sugar water in slightly smashed Styrofoam cups either.

Several weeks ago, Miss Lee, one of our math teachers, asked if I would write some examples of Pi-ku—a poem where each line corresponds syllables (or letters or words) with digits of pi—for “Pi(e) Day” last Monday (March 14). I jumped at the chance when she proposed the idea, but I couldn’t even eke out a semi-intelligent 3-1-4 poem by the deadline, let alone the twenty digits she initially asked for.

So this morning, I am making time in class, after reading the Collins poem aloud a few times with my students, to write about trouble. They are writing about the trouble with waking up first period, the trouble with Mr. Anson’s English class, the trouble with social media, the trouble with Donald Trump, and the trouble with girls. And I am writing about the trouble with poetry.

However, during the few precious minutes I steal each period, after attendance is taken and before students share their writing, I have not been able to complete any of the poems previously begun over past months. The ideas in my head repeatedly hit the snooze and demand “five more minutes” before waking. I’ve managed to stir up few scraps, a few images that remain clogged in my brain and resurface just often enough to remind me that the trap needs to be emptied, or at minimum, the filter needs to be changed.

Images of a cemetery with fall leaves and lichen creeping over the sandstone, along with an incomplete tribute to my father appear, as do words of a semi-formed piece pre-titled “Death Sucks,” which is a phrase I stole directly from Chris Thompson—to be perfectly honest for a moment—my friend and colleague whose ramblings about the run-ins with the reaper I jotted down and carried with me in a side pocket of my suit coat as I participated in more funerals in the past ten months than I have in a lifetime.

Maybe, if I ramble long enough, the tip of my pencil will burst into a little flame as I sit here in the metaphoric dark.