Poetry Smoetry

As the leader of the Psalms bible study this season, I'm studying a new perspective on poetry with my class.  The Psalms are poetry and our study encourages us to read and re-read and then re-read again each of the Psalms we cover.  I think we've ready Psalm 1 at least 22 times in the four-week old study.

I don't like poetry. 

I especially detest the kind that rhymes.

Now and then, I find a poem I can inhabit momentarily; Maya Angelou's Phenomenal Woman is one such work.  When the moment passes, well, then I move on. 

Read a poem 22 times?  Never.

I'm much happier lost in prose - prose of any kind, whether fiction or non-fiction, cereal box or best-seller.

The word "prose" means straight, direct, unadorned speech, and comes from the Latin prosa oratio, meaning straight-forward.

No wonder I like it.

I'm not a fan of indirect approaches, context clues, or metaphorical speech.  I do not care for mystery in written or spoken form.  I dislike intensely having to read body language to discern someone's meaning, especially when the speaker is lying or misleading. I cannot use a cliche to save my life (really I can't; it's become something of a family joke). 

I had a professor in college the first go-round who once commented on a critique I wrote about Bobbie Ann Mason's In Country; "you craft sentences which are well-made and direct...," he typed, "[putting to] shame much of what I read on this campus."  Not only did I frame his critique, but I had a huge crush on him after that comment.

Don't get me wrong.  I can solve the mystery created by indirect approches, foreshadowing, contextual clues, metaphors, and body language.  I can unravel the language and critique the work succinctly.  I can read what someone's trying to say without words.  There are times I can even enjoy doing it.

But love poetry?  Mystery?  Metaphor? 

Pfft.

No.  Slap me upside the head with the straight-forward, the direct, the truth.

I'll love you for it.

And I'll never lead the Psalms again.