It’s Day 14 of the Slice of Life Challenge, and I am celebrating a different living poet each day throughout the month of March. As I curated the list of poets whose collections I wanted to use to inspire my writing, I selected a diverse range of writers – young/old, men/women of differing faiths, lifestyles, and races. Today, I’m celebrating Joy Sullivan, whose collection was like eating a carton of ice cream. I couldn’t stop at a serving size – – I devoured the whole decadent bowl of poetry in one sitting – ice cream, whipped cream, caramel and chocolate drizzle, nuts and a cherry – and I see myself rereading this one frequently in carton-sized servings.
You can read more about Joy Sullivan here and here. She also has a Substack, Necessary Salt. Since Amanda Gorman’s reading at Biden’s inauguration where she wore the yellow coat and made poetry ring in ears across this nation and the rise of a generation of viral social media poets like Joy Sullivan, Lyndsay Rush, and others, including spoken word poets like Clint Smith and Sarah Kay, and event writers such as Chris Vitiello who appears as The Poetry Fox in a fox suit with an old typewriter and clicks out poems on the spot for folks who give him a word, we have seen a resurgence of poetry that makes it no longer a dead man’s indulgence. These younger writers are breathing life back into something that, for a few generations now, has met with fear and intimidation on the ears of high school and college students who were forever being required to analyze it as if it were a frog being dissected.
But poetry isn’t some ill-fated lab frog destined to be gutted and pinned flap by flap to the black tarry pan and exposed as parts and pieces by hands wearing vinyl gloves and gagging the whole way through it. No, poetry is ice cream and decadent cake, old dogs and puppies, blankets and candles and mostly arms that reach out, take your hand, meet you wherever you are when you think you’re alone in your feelings, and draw you in for an embrace. It coaxes out emotions you didn’t know you could feel. Step into this book and some of the other living poets and discover a pulse you never even knew you had running through your blood. Start at your local library and arrange inter-library loans. Keep a ranking of those you like, and then, out of the blue, there will be that one poet whose lines are a fish net, and you’re the fish. You will be forever hooked. There’s a word for it……
There’s A Word for It
What do you call nostalgia for all the places
beneath this wing
of swallowtails, sow thistle
wild as grass, so cool and soft
it softens something?
Taken from: Ghost Heart; The Cashier at the Gas Station Asks Where I’m From; Of Wildflowers; Tiger Farm; Sockeye
Common Threads 
Your thinking about poetry and its importance leaves me smiling this morning, especially this line. “poetry isn’t some ill-fated lab frog.” I once had a curriculum coordinator who saw the absence of poetry specifically mentioned in the writing section of the common core standards as “proof” that it was (her words), “a lab frog” whose time was over! Perhaps you knew her as well?
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Kim,
I enjoyed Instructions for Traveling West and will reread it. I didn’t annotate the first time around. I like how the collection is so expansive and how the idea of traveling west is both literal and metaphoric. It really speaks to me as one whose life is in the west, who also traveled west and has stayed. I wish more people understood these ideas about geography and mindset. Most who live east of the Mississippi don’t get it at all. Anyway, love the cento and all the nature imagery in the lines you’ve chosen.
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Thanks for introducing me to Joy. I will check out her poetry. I also liked reading your reminder of what poetry is and isn’t. I did NOT have a very good experience of reading poetry in HS. Therefore, me favorite line is “These younger writers are breathing life back into something that, for a few generations now, has met with fear and intimidation on the ears of high school and college students who were forever being required to analyze it as if it were a frog being dissected.”
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