Poetry of Want/Poetry of Need

Poetry of Want/Poetry of Need

What poetry do you need? Do you want? 

Poetry of Want/Poetry of Need

About two years ago, as vaccines were rolling out, Ada Limón wrote an essay in Literary Hub about the challenges of reopening, of returning to a world after the events of the preceding fourteen months, especially something so bodily and cognitively jarring as a pandemic. Perhaps that return to normalcy was forestalled or over-ambitious or outright fictive for April of 2021. Rereading the essay now, I wonder how much of my own sense of self has not yet grown back.In the essay, Limón writes that the "poet Marie Howe once said if I didn’t know where a poem was going, I should just put an 'I want' in there and see what happens . . . But the question of want is different than the question of need. What I want is for the world to open again, for the grief to leave us like some storm in a dream, for us to wake up and be healed. If I’m honest, I also want a sipping shot of very good tequila."I know what I want, as a writer: Publication, community, to finish my TBR pile. What I need is often much simpler, much more American: to afford healthcare, to pay rent, to get some sleep, to be safe, for people I love to be safe, for my students to be safe.As a teacher, I rarely assign poetry outside of class. This is an ongoing debate in composition studies, to the point that I was asked about teaching literature in comp courses in an interview recently, and the person asking the question prefaced it with as much warning as she could give: "It's okay, there's no right or wrong answer, this is a tough question for us all." What I'll do instead is put a poem on-board and allow the class to read it together, think through it as a group. I'm used to be students not wanting to read poetry because they're used to looking for a thesis statement in literature. What I ask sometimes, instead, is, "What do you want to get out of this poem?" Perhaps what I should ask is, "What do you need to get out of this poem?"For me, the kind of poetry I want is poetry that will make the world make sense, organize my sense of it and myself into words that express what cannot otherwise be expressed in a letter or an email or a story. Maybe this isn't the poetry I need, though. Maybe what I need is a poetics of delight (as Ross Gay might put it), poetry that I can stick in my back pocket when I need to remember what I enjoy about life or when I need an alternative to doomscrolling.What poems do you want? What poems do you need? Are you lucky enough to know the difference? In the meantime, I hope you keep writing. The world needs it.

Peace,Keene ShortEditor-in-Chief

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