The problem with poetry

I don’t read a lot of poetry.

There a few poets that really get my attention, Walt Whitman and Charles Bukowski mainly. Their ability to say so much in such a small space is profound.

I prefer novels because I like the ability to keep reading, 10, 50, 100 pages at a time. With poetry, I can only read one or two at a time, and then I have to sit and ponder, because so much power was conveyed in a single page that it would overpower me if I continued to read. 

I’ve been working on Bukowski’s What matters most is how you walk through the fire for about two months now.  Today I read a pair of poems on his childhood during the great depression, and his view of the world during the events. The beauty of the work was profound. 

Bukowski is known for being a dirty old man, but even dirty old men were once children, children who observed a broken world with a sense of wonder and hope.

So that’s what I think of poetry, it’s not that I’m against it, it’s just That I can’t handle it quit yet.

The names of the poems, if you would like to find and read them, are my father and the bum and legs, hips and behind.

Cheers.

-Josh