Poetry

Do people actually READ poetry anymore?  I don't see a huge market for it.  I enjoy going to readings, more like recitations than readings, but I wonder why people still write poetry.  I write for my own enjoyment or to get out a particular emotion, but I doubt anyone would actually PAY me for any of it.

I am listening to "the Receptionist" a book about a woman who worked at the New Yorker for over 20 years as a receptionist.  I think she was more a frustrated writer and her anger comes through her words, as she talks about that time.  I don't think she really liked anyone she came in contact with.  Maybe she just didn't like herself. I probably won't listen to too much more of the book, as she is depressing me.  She talks about writers I have never heard of and am looking into so maybe I am getting something out of it.  She is not very nice about any of them.  I did get a book of poems by John Berryman to see if I like them.  Apparently there are a whole LOT of Pulitzer Prize winning poets I have never heard of.  Maybe my education is lacking.

I hate being told whom to admire in the literary world.  As an English major, white and female, I am supposed to ADORE Jane Austen.  Nope.  If I had to pick someone, I suppose it would be Willa Cather, whose American cadence speaks to me more than a Regency era Englishwoman.  I need to re-read some Willa Cather. I love "My Antonia"  but it has been years since I have read anything by her.  I think I will start with "A Lost Lady" which I remember as being very good.

I will continue to try to find my "lost" poetry "skills"   There are a few groups of poets up here in the Foothills that I think about joining, but don't feel like they would have me until I get back up to speed.  Right now, I still have the training wheels on.