[New-Poetry] Eratophobia: fear of poetry (& the end of Nat'l Poetry Slag Week)

[TheOldMole]

I love that.

Wish I'd known that Lew was reading relatively close by -- I might have 
gone.

I don't think, for Turco, that it's at all strange for a division, that 
being an issue that's so important to him.

JforJames at aol.com wrote:
> The other night I drove down to Meriden CT where Lewis Turco gave a 
> reading. It was a small crowd in Meriden Public library but there were 
> a few of his old friends from Meriden where he grew up. That was 
> nice to see. He read a number of pieces that had to do with the town 
> and/or townfolk. He had just published a first volume of a Collected 
> Poems, which he said contained his unrhymed and free verse poetry. He 
> was going to have second volume released shortly containing the formal 
> poetry. (I thought that was a strange way to divide the body of one's 
> work.)
>  
> He read this poem and said it was almost verbatim from a letter he 
> received.
> Finnegan
> --
>  
> ERATOPHOBIA: The Fear of Poetry
>  
>     --for Linda Sardella Boucher
>  
> "Dear Cousin," she wrote, "Thanks
> for the books of poems. I must admit
> that I haven't opened them. It's a source
> of pride to me to have a poet in the family,
> but I'm afraid I won't understand
>  
> "the poems and I'd feel stupid.
> I fear I haven't opened them.
> I must admit I fear what lies in wait
> between the covers: words that writhe,
> that hiss at me off the page,
>  
> "words that wriggle and won't hold still
> to let me understand them.
> Weird, huh? I'll work at it. I'll work
> to get beneath the covers, to open one
> in bed beneath the covers - they lie in wait
>  
> "beside me on the nightstand. I'll reach out
> one night and grab one, pull it underneath
> the covers of my bed and, with a flashlight,
> open it and see the poems writhing,
> hissing at me on the page I fear."
>  
>
> --Lewis Turco, Book of Fears
> Other phobias, here...
> http://www.italianamericanwriters.com/Turco.html#poem1
>
>
>
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-- 
Tad Richards
http://www.opus40.org/tadrichards/
http://opusforty.blogspot.com/