Dear, An English Professor

Dear,
Ms. __________

I suppose we write poems just so other people can think what they will about them. Yet, when I read them, I enjoy the act of learning what someone else had known. When Dante, for instance, linked rage and wealth, it was something only a master poet could do.

Being that you are published, and you are the authority over the art---seeing that you teach courses on it---it's just what we need to do with poetry, is ensnare people in their little postmodern bubbles. It's like no thought had ever been made, beside one internally entertained. No word on a page could ever inspire one to think about the world differently. No logic could be exerted on an "Esoteric Construct" that could ever possibly be true.

I understand the reason people read poetry right now. It is easy. There is little enjoyment in doing Math, so there is little enjoyment in finding something wise in someone else's words. I understand it perfectly---and do not begrudge you for getting published. However, I may interject that what makes a good poem is truth. That something true had been said.

You can never love someone you haven't listened to. You can imprint on their words as many of your own ideas as you want, but you don't truly understand them until you have recognized what their idea is. Whether disagreed with it, or not---it certainly doesn't matter. Because something had been said.

It's that reason, that if we forget this about poets like Eliot or Emerson, then there really is nothing left. There is no reason to speak, and no reason to even write a poem. If you are okay with someone interpolating into your poems---what business is it of yours to be a poet? If what you're offering is entertainment, then there can be no thing worth writing. Movies are far better an experience than any novel I'd ever read. So are dreams; which wise men try to interpret.

I suppose the enjoyment of all poetry is to think what you will, and refuse to believe someone else may have thought differently. And then to do them the discourtesy of never really trying to understand what they said. And so long as profits are coming in, what was the art but a means to getting rich?