Falling Out of Love with Poetry

How Do I Rekindle the Flame?

Photo credit: Clint Gardner on Best Running

No audio today. I’m not feeling well.

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I got an MFA in creative writing with a poetry concentration in 2002. The sonnet form was my favorite to read and write. I loved fitting words into the required form, and it was a challenge I adored. However, I wrote different types of poems, both formal and free verse. Some were even published in literary magazines such as the North American Review (Jan./Feb. 2001, p. 45). It was the first (and only) time I was paid for writing, and I still have the check stub. The poem was published in print, but this is it:

Soloist

Shortly after you lay your head on the pillow
and place your left arm around my shoulders,

a concerto of sleep begins. Your breath
is accompanied by an orchestra of late-night

traffic: the staccato rhythm drummed by a helicopter
flying overhead; the muted notes of a distant train

whistle, like a French horn playing, pianissimo;
the crescendo and decresendo of an automobile

passing beneath the window. And I, the conductor,
nuzzle against your neck, bringing forth your solo

of murmurs.

This is the best poem I’ve written in my life, in my opinion, but I haven’t written a poem in almost ten years. I tried writing a poem a day in April 2015 during National Poetry Month, but all I came up with was drivel. I’d begun learning to write fiction, and now it’s like I’ve lost my poetry mojo, though I’m not sure there’s a correlation. It probably didn’t help that I stopped reading poetry to study as many novels and short stories as possible.

I’ve become a person who no longer “gets” poetry no matter how hard I try. I guess this happened because I stopped reading and writing it. I took a free poetry workshop last April with Regie Cabico, a Filipino-American poet. It was fun, maybe because I didn’t expect too much from myself. I’d love to resurrect my love for poetry but I’m unsure how.