Four, twenty-five cent copies of a
prestigious, poetry magazine from
2011 and 2012 picked up at a local,
book sale and two days later the
poet didn’t understand the new
gnostics and their words, metaphors,
similes, allusions contained in
cryptic forms, line breaks and the
absence of line breaks. For the poet,
it was like trying to read his son’s
graduate papers with charts and graphs
and statistical analysis for the
master of management and labor re-
lations degree. It was like reading
a physician’s signature on a prescript-
ion. It was then he understood why
one of his best friends who has a
doctorate says he never reads poetry
and says it is too hard to understand
and wants to know what degree his
friend the poet has to qualify him
to be a poet. The poet understood
the editor of the poetry magazine
wanted to bring poetry back to the
people. He is no longer the editor.
It was then the poet understood why
almost nobody reads poetry and why
the poetry section at any bookstore
is miniscule and why the copies he
bought and brought home were going
for twenty-five cents each. It is
why the poet was never so glad, as
right now, for the poetry of Billy
Collins and Ted Kooser.