The Spaghetti of Poetry

 

Poetry is a language I do not understand as I can not tune into the words, nor their meaning if ever it is read aloud.

There was a white haired man a professor from the university. A man easily annoyed by latecomers and the bright chirrups of ringing phones who was about to read his work out in the central library. He was trying to entertain, and no doubt his dragooned loyal students found him so. But for me it was all patronising silliness that left me cold. He was a man who thought himself to be still attached to the threads of his youth, but he was threadbare and his jovial behaviour had a hollowness at its core.

I watched and tried to listen but all I heard was the word ‘doorknob’, a word he failed to turn; and he left unopened once again the door of poetry for me.

We were led into the bowels of the library a grim place of yellowed paint and thick pipes where amid the clutter in a room some were about engaged in writing a collaborated book in forty-eight hours. They had, when I chatted to them; though at that time they were more interested in quiche and unwrapping other plates of food from their cling-filmed covers; little idea as to the genre, the main character or where their story would go.

Behind them was a shelf on which was written the label ‘embargo’ perhaps that would be the place to put their book at the end for I could sense how it was being pulled apart before they’d even written it and that it was like so much cooked spaghetti that was falling from a pan each pulling upon their own strand.

I guess as well as poetry I don’t ‘get’ the collaborated novel either. Or more likely I just don’t ‘get’ anything.