Who's Afraid of Big Bad Poetry?
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From the age of seven to twelve, I attended a primary school at the foot of Mount Faber. The wrongly named mountain was a mere hill, and the school was so small that you could have missed it when you drove past to the scenic views at the top of the second highest point of Singapore. There were only two classes at each grade level, and so almost everyone knew almost everyone, and the teachers knew us all. I didn't know then how lucky we were. We had so much attention and so many opportunities to do stuff because there were so few of us.
One of the things stuck in my mind was a stage production of "Three Little Pigs." I wanted to be the Wolf, I was certainly tall enough, but I was the Little Pig who lived in a house made of brick. For consolation, I got to boil the pot of water that killed the Wolf, after which I joined hands with my two fellow Piglets and danced around the pot and sang "So Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf."
I don't know if Poetry has ever been as Big and Bad as the Wolf. Someone once said that Poetry makes nothing happen. However, it still amazes me that so many people are afraid of it. They don't read it because they fear obscurity and ambiguity. Some people go to Instagram to receive their dose of popular, sentimental, and instantly comprehensible poems. It is but another way of expressing their fear of real poetry. To assuage such fears, SP Blog begins a new monthly series called "All Sorts of Reasons," in which a real poem, classic or contemporary, receives friendly attention. The series writer is a master teacher, whom I've the honor of calling a friend. The first poem of the series is not about a wolf, but a puppy dog, but it is an animal, as Helaine L. Smith shows, with a wolvish grin.
And we're bringing poetry (and fiction) with us to the Association of Writers Conference in San Antonio, Texas, next week. Paula Mendoza, the winner of the 2nd Gaudy Boy Poetry Book Prize, selected by Vijay Seshadri, will be signing her book Play for Time. Come meet her and her uncompromising poems.
Jee Leong Koh
February 27, 2020
From the age of seven to twelve, I attended a primary school at the foot of Mount Faber. The wrongly named mountain was a mere hill, and the school was so small that you could have missed it when you drove past to the scenic views at the top of the second highest point of Singapore. There were only two classes at each grade level, and so almost everyone knew almost everyone, and the teachers knew us all. I didn't know then how lucky we were. We had so much attention and so many opportunities to do stuff because there were so few of us.
One of the things stuck in my mind was a stage production of "Three Little Pigs." I wanted to be the Wolf, I was certainly tall enough, but I was the Little Pig who lived in a house made of brick. For consolation, I got to boil the pot of water that killed the Wolf, after which I joined hands with my two fellow Piglets and danced around the pot and sang "So Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf."
I don't know if Poetry has ever been as Big and Bad as the Wolf. Someone once said that Poetry makes nothing happen. However, it still amazes me that so many people are afraid of it. They don't read it because they fear obscurity and ambiguity. Some people go to Instagram to receive their dose of popular, sentimental, and instantly comprehensible poems. It is but another way of expressing their fear of real poetry. To assuage such fears, SP Blog begins a new monthly series called "All Sorts of Reasons," in which a real poem, classic or contemporary, receives friendly attention. The series writer is a master teacher, whom I've the honor of calling a friend. The first poem of the series is not about a wolf, but a puppy dog, but it is an animal, as Helaine L. Smith shows, with a wolvish grin.
And we're bringing poetry (and fiction) with us to the Association of Writers Conference in San Antonio, Texas, next week. Paula Mendoza, the winner of the 2nd Gaudy Boy Poetry Book Prize, selected by Vijay Seshadri, will be signing her book Play for Time. Come meet her and her uncompromising poems.
Jee Leong Koh
February 27, 2020
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