i want you to think i’m smart, so i’m going to talk about poetry.

as an english minor and a writer (or at least a wannabe), i am supposed to like poetry…dickinson and whitman and frost are supposed to at least occupy a corner of my bookshelves. but i have a dirty little secret, i’ve never gotten into it. i slogged through ‘em in college, but they escaped my brain immediately after each exam (and sometimes before). the narrative, the story, that’s what i wanted to read.

well, i’m still no connoisseur of iambic pentameter, and i’m not even sure what makes a poem a poem (it doesn’t have to rhyme?!?!), but i’ve started reading a poet who has at least warmed me to the idea that poems can be entertaining, unpretentious, and, well, worth reading.

here is a sample:

—

Another Reason Why I Don’t Keep a Gun in the House
by Billy Collins

The neighbors’ dog will not stop barking.
He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark
that he barks every time they leave the house.
They must switch him on on their way out.

The neighbors’ dog will not stop barking.
I close all the windows in the house
and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast
but I can still hear him muffled under the music,
barking, barking, barking,

and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra,
his head raised confidently as if Beethoven
had included a part for barking dog.

When the record finally ends he is still barking,
sitting there in the oboe section barking,
his eyes fixed on the conductor who is
entreating him with his baton

while the other musicians listen in respectful
silence to the famous barking dog solo,
that endless coda that first established
Beethoven as an innovative genius.