Who&#0146s afraid of U.S. poets?

Sue Goyette is a Cole Harbour poet and novelist. Her collection of poems, The True Names of Birds was nominated for the 1999 Governor General&#0146s Award for Poetry.

I call her up and read a little bit of a news story. U.S. First Lady Laura Bush has cancelled [1] a poetry symposium that was to have happened at the White House on February 12. Goyette hasn&#0146t read the story. I tell her that Bush has put the kibosh on the poem fest, because she found out some of the invited poets were planning to read anti-war verses protesting her husband&#0146s aggressive stand toward Iraq.

Goyette laughs. &#0147It just blows me away that anyone thinks poetry can be used as an instrument of upheaval.&#0148

Who knew?

Not many of us, because most of us don&#0146t read enough poetry, or read it well enough, to know its strength. Bad experiences in our formative years leave us turned off poetry, thinking it the fine fancy flowery language of the tired and over emotional.

Poetry, when taught badly, has always been used as the agent of a didactic devil. It is parsed and picked at in the name of difficult hide-and-seek games. What motif does the poet use to express longing? What radical shift in perspective is the antithesis of the central myth? Find five examples of alliteration. Good gravy.

There is an art, a skill, in reading poetry, as there is in looking at abstract painting, in many things. A good teacher can give us the equipment we need to read poetry. A bad teacher cannot.

In an ideal world, poets would teach poetry. http://members.tripod.com/~bumbleshoot/poetry/tynes2.html [2] target = "_blank">Maxine Tynes won the Peoples Poet of Canada Award in 1990. She has been writing poetry all her life. Tynes wrote Woman Talking Woman in 1990. It remains her favourite because of the passion in it.

“I wrote that manuscript seeing love in the world, with a lot of fury and lust and passion.&#0148

Tynes also teaches poetry and has for more than two decades. She says poetry is for everyone, including children.

&#0147A lot of people instill a fear of poetry in young people, making them feel it&#0146s out of their reach or not of their world when really poetry is just another arm of expression. In fact, kids can appreciate poetry and use it to express themselves.&#0148

Tynes knows that there&#0146s more to poetry than memorising verses and being told to &#0147find ten ideas or you&#0146re a failure. Young people should be given the example of loving the heart and soul of it, and the colour and the life.&#0148

Later in life, some come back to poetry and see it for the power it has. Good poetry anyway; that&#0146s another problem. Poetry is like the girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead: when it&#0146s good, it&#0146s very, very good, and when it&#0146s bad, it&#0146s horrid. Good poetry is the human condition undiluted, with no room for the padding or fluff prose can hold. Like a can of lemonade before you add the water.

Poetry at its best is some kind of protest &#0151 against war or death or lack of loving. Poetry&#0146s passion &#0151 religious, spiritual, sexual &#0151 inspires us to rattle the bars of our cages. Poetry is not therapy but reckoning.

Goyette agrees about the power of poetry. As she continues to talk about Laura Bush cancelling the symposium, she says &#0147Maybe it&#0146s time people come to see poetry as 100 proof. We&#0146ve been using it to coax over hearts and talk them into loving, so a good poem can maybe switch on a light and people can come to their senses. Good for Laura Bush for being afraid.&#0148

Can eating pita stop the war? Can a poem stop the war? The power and passion in poetry can move our hearts and minds. You never can tell. Maybe Laura Bush knows. By any means necessary.

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