I like to think of myself as a reader.  Not so much that I’m “well read.”  I’ve read some classics and a lot of nonfiction in the last few years.  I have also read some highly entertaining novels that few would list as “literature.”  I’m rambling… My point is that I like to think of myself as someone who reads a lot of different genres and forms.  But I have a dirty little secret.  I hate poetry.

Maybe you are thinking that isn’t so uncommon.  A lot of people dislike poetry.  I, however, have discovered I have a completely irrational hatred of poetry that I do not completely understand.  I know it is judgey but nearly all poets make me roll my eyes.  I think as a writer I feel like poets should make the time and effort to write a story that might relate to someone besides themselves.  I suppose a poet’s response might be that I’m too inefficient to express myself in a poem; I need an multi-page composition.  And I would defend myself.  With a classically structured persuasive essay.

A few years ago I was talked into going to a poetry reading at the King’s English Bookstore here in Salt Lake City.  I went with a friend and once we arrived I saw that they had an open box of wine, which is my favorite flavor.  Open, that is.

I thought, “Okay… I can do this.  It is poetry, but it isn’t bourgie poetry.  It’s box wine poetry.”

I was fine (bored, but fine) until the second poet got up to read from his recently published collection. You are already picturing him, probably. He was wearing a sports jacket, jeans, and a stringy pony tail.  In the third or fourth poem he recited the line, “The spider scuttled out from beneath the ice cube…” and I had to bite my hand to keep from yelling, “No it didn’t and fuck you for saying that it did!!!”

‘Where the hell did that come from?’ I asked myself, taking a sniff of my boxed chardonnay to search for clues.  What about this poor cliché of a man had invited the full furnace of my rage, without any discernible prelude?

I elbowed my friend and we slipped out the side door and went to dinner at the Lebanese restaurant next door.  ‘Maybe I was hurt very badly in a past life by a mediocre poet,’ I hypothesized as we crunched through the snow between the two sidewalks.  ‘Or maybe I was a spider who was unsuspectingly crushed by ice.’

We will never know.

About Rachel Lewis

I am a writer, ceramic artist, knitter, and stepmom. As a playwright, I had six short plays produced in showcases and festivals in Manhattan, Salt Lake City, and Austin. My full-length play, Locking Doors, was presented by Wordsmith Theatre Company in The New Lab Theatre (University of Utah) in 2005. I co-wrote a teleplay titled “Thank God I’m Atheist” which won the 2015 “No God But Funny” contest founded by the Center for Inquiry. My short nonfiction essay, “It’s Coming Down,” was published by the online literary magazine Halfway Down the Stairs. My essay "The Red Rock Chronicles" was published in Contemporary West magazine. I currently work in pharmaceuticals professionally and write recreationally, but dream of making the transition to write professionally and do pharmaceuticals recreationally. I am a Utah native and live in Salt Lake City with my family and our Goldendoodle. I am working on a collection of humorous non-fiction essays and a second full-length play. Follow me at: rachelclewis.com @rachel_lewis_ut (Twitter) @rachel_lewis_ut (Instagram)

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