Love and Theft

“What have you done with all your words & gaudy language hats?”
-Lara Glenum

I do not believe that only poets read contemporary poetry, but I do believe that all curious and serious readers of contemporary poetry are reading to steal. We want to steal technique, mood, vocabulary, experience. All reading is stealing -- but poetry readers are going a little further, maybe, are thrill-seeking, pursuing a potentially synesthesic change of the brain.

The black fur coat I was grew forlorn
I couldn’t hide in the snow
Domestication’s velocity stunned
A docile patch of seeming clam
These yellow eyes can’t lie

-Brenda Iijima, from If Not Metamorphic

As a poet, an engaging book of poetry gives me a sensation comparable to learning a new physical task (ballroom dancing, flip-turning while swimming laps, driving stick shift); I blatantly and shamelessly read to get information about how to write. In fact, I often want things to be more exposed. I want not only to experience the gestalt of individual effects aligned to create a piece of art, but also to see how it is done, to feel that a creator is generous enough, intellectually savvy enough, to reveal her hand.

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