The Only Way To Read Poetry Poem by Julia Luber

For this is the only way to read poetry. To have an option,
to respond, to communicate, to know your reflexes in the
poem's respect might be taken well to heart. To have that
option to have something to state while the poem's deep
meanings and surprising nuances circle and buzz around
you like a fly- its presence one just can't get rid of and its
influence being so real and whole. And YET it is a fly to Love
and to Adore, to linger over and discover, to explore. One
never feels stupid in reading a poem, even if one does not
really understand it- at least at first. Even if one does not get
that perhaps it just does not suit your mind. But you will
find something redemptive in it nonetheless. If it does not
speak to you, you can think it's a dumb poem. If it triggers a
difficult memory, you can think it's a difficult and mean poem.
If you think it's just too complicated for the mood you are cur-
rently in, you can think, "I'll never know when I'll need to feel
simpler than something, somebody. I'll never know when I'll
need to twist my mind and get me out of myself and into some-
thing besides these strange and unnerving states of awareness-
of things that don't really even have to do with me in the first place."
And yet which influence me so. And yet which influence me so.
And when you are alone, here you can feel like you have something
to grapple with, to even fight a bit with, in terms of this and that-
things that don't necessarily have to do with your daily life. That
daily life which does not always feel so great sometimes and could
have been so much better. Or even that is so fantabulous that you
just can't wait to tell us about your fabulous life. Safer to write poems
about your children and grandchildren than to splash their images
all over social media….isn't it? Isn't this here the best thing about
social media of all. To read poetry. To meet the poet through words.
To feel, to respond, to notate, to elaborate, to add: now that is,
this is, what it is to read poetry. Here on PoemHunter-this is poetry!