Poem on Your Blog Day

I like to think of myself as a very well-rounded, multi-talented person. That self-affirming belief is sometimes the only thing that gets me through the day. I take pride in the fact that every intellectual activity I've tried to do, I've been fairly good at. I can write essays, I can draw, I can code, I can speak Spanish, I can discuss philosophy, I can write fiction, I can fix (or at least troubleshoot) equipment, I can decode legalese...

But I can't do poetry.

On the handful of occasions when I've tried to write a poem, the result has been abysmal. I hated the process. I hated the result.

I can read poetry. Sort of. Shakespeare's plays, verse translations of Dante or Homer, Dr. Seuss, song lyrics, bawdy limericks, maybe a haiku or three. But when I try to read actual I-mean-this-to-be-a-poem poetry by a serious poet, it just doesn't work for me. My mind tries to process it as if it were prose, and it's usually pretty bad prose. I just don't grasp the... poetry of it.

"Poem on Your Blog Day" is supposed to be an event for people to write about a poem or a poet. And with my apoetic brain, I'm at a bit of a loss. The best I can come up with is to recall hearing a recording of Maya Angelou reciting "I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings". She brought out the poetry of the verse with her reading of it, and I got an inkling of what readers often find so moving in a poem.