Poetry is weird. It's that dull thing about a lark or a road your high school teacher made you memorize. It's a bunch of words strung together in such a way to make you feel not-so-bright. It's what you feel a little bad about because you don't artistically, aesthetically appreciate it. It's a naughty rhyme, or 17 syllables about a chrysanthemum, or 600 lines about Brad that you wrote in your diary in 9th grade. Yep, all that.

Guess what, though – that lark? that road? you don't really have to get it. There’s no secret combination you have to hit on to unlock the “answer.” You know how when you look at a Van Gogh painting or hear Beethoven you find it lovely without knowing how to paint or compose? Think of poetry like that. Just because it’s language and you're a user of language doesn't mean you have to know how to make it to love it. And sometimes, it's even fun(ny). Here's a good place to start. Good, right?

Jane Kenyon suffered from depression and died of cancer in her 40s. Total bummer. But she wrote this! She wrote these super-accessible, emotionally honest, and sometimes funny poems that many a non-poetry-lover could really dig. She hits you where you're at, just like that one Cure song. If you’re interested, try looking up her selected work, Otherwise (which you can check out from the Free Library here).

Want to go on this little blog-y journey with me and talk occasionally about poetry? We'll take it easy and try to read stuff you find lovely. I'm not even gonna make you rhyme or count syllables. Write me some comments with suggestions about what you'd like to know, learn, gripe, talk about.  Lucky me. Lucky shirt.