Soup for the Poetic Soul
I've always been skeptical about poetry. Sure I have a soft spot in my heart for Pablo Neruda and Emily Dickinson, but overall I just don't GET poetry. It feels too hard and too thick. Complicated for the sake of poetry. Every once in a while a line will resonate but I just am not one of those stuffy, bookish, tea-drinking poets. I'd much rather read The Onion or McSweeney's.
So I was skeptical when my Copy Techniques teacher, Sage, introduced our class to Billy Collins - the U.S. Poet Laureate from 2001-2003. I was tired and not in a poetic mood. But now Billy is my new best friend. His words are so clean and human - so unpretentious - he wrote a poem about a Victoria's Secret catalogue. This is much more my kind of poetry. So I ran to B&N on Friday morning because Amazon is just not fast enough. I needed it and I needed it now. This video is on YouTube (there are a few different ones) - and it's a gorgeous visual interpretation of his poetry. A quote by Billy:
"As I'm writing, I'm always reader conscious. I have one reader in mind, someone who is in the room with me, and who I'm talking to, and i want to make sure I don't talk too fast, or too glibly. Usually I try to create a hospitable tone at the beginning of a poem. Stepping from the title to the first lines is like stepping into a canoe. A lot of things can go wrong."
I love this man.
To see more of these amazing videos click here.
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