WAR Poem: The Poet, by Elizabeth Wadsworth Ellis

(After Carolyn Forche)

A stranger knocked at her door and said,

“So, are you going to write about yourself for the rest of your life? Or do you want to come to my country where a war is coming with your fellowship and learn something.”

So, I read her book about how she took him up on his offer.

I read it cover to cover stopping only to go to the kitchen to eat or go to the bathroom to pee or go to the bedroom to sleep while she went to his country (where a war was) coming to learn.

Most people don’t want to read poets, finding us snooty, hob nob, and hoity toity.

Most people find poems obscure, oblique, and difficult, and think poets do it on purpose.

Most people find they have to go slow, have to take time and can’t just buzz through it.

Someone once asked me if I was a poet and I said No, poets have no cred in our country,

And people will think I think too much of myself,

And that I’m going to write about myself for the rest of my life.