Poetry Thursday

This week's idea - to spend some time with poetry that we usually avoid, that makes us uncomfortable, or that we don't like (or think we don't like) - was hard for me if only for purely logistical reasons. I've said before that I drifted away from both the reading and the writing of poetry about ten years ago. Since then I have moved four times, once internationally. Any poetry that I wasn't truely fond of didn't survive all those different packings, and my collection was none to stellar to begin with. Getting my hands on English-language poetry over here isn't easy; there is none at the library and the collection at the book store is small and tends to the tried and true, and is often prohibitively expensive. And I'll confess that I wasn't willing to spend money on poetry I didn't think I was going to like.

So I took a different tact. I decided to avail myself of the library after all - the German collection. In many ways I am fond of the German language. I find it bitingly precise; efficient; and as cleverly constructed as a three-dimensional puzzle. What it do not find it is poetic. Of all the words that come to mind when I think of German, poetic is not one of them. Of all the ways in which I might be able to express myself in German, poetry is not one of them. I will go to my grave without ever attempting to write a poem in German, I know that much; the language of my heart is certainly English. But there is no reason to go to my grave without reading a poem in German. So I am reading Goethe (how predictable! how stereotypical!) in German.

Congratulate me or console me as you see fit.

See what other people are reading here.