Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

Why You Should Read Poetry

I thought this was a good article.

It is a good article (thanks--though it calls me out, that bit about the stereotypical rhyme-obbsessed & hopeless romatincs...). Thanks for sharing.

Last Sunday, the new bishop of the Metropolitan Washington, DC Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America was installed in Silver Spring (this was kinda important for me, since I did just receive a call to a congregation in Middletown, Connecticut and this new bishop needed to be installed before I can be ordained (next Friday in Vienna, Virginia (all are welcome--I'll put up info))). The presiding bishop of the ELCA, Mark Hanson, preached and in his sermon he uplifted the need of poetry in society as a whole and his particular hope for poets to recast the faith of the church. A particular message for a particular community perhaps, but it isn't often the higher-ups are calling for creativity and newness and metaphor in the church (especially when such creativity and relloking at faith might question the place of the hierarchy...). I thought it was interesting.

A ramble--maybe more general discussion-esque, but whatever. Here:

I wrote a little rhyming verse
and threw it out for nothing worse
than but to see
if back to me
would boomerang its poesy course.

There ain't no Why to poetry. Ain't no Why to sex.

Either you want it, you got or both. Else, no matter no bother with it.

Why read poetry: if you gotta ask, you ain't ready for it. gotta mature a bit, or grow see-nile.