I need to read more poetry, such as Cummings, Dylan Thomas, and Robert Frost. I’ve read Milton’s Paradise Lost, which was a difficult read. I had no idea what it was, but I respected his use of verse. I also read The Preludes by Wordsworth, which was another difficult one, but not as much as Milton’s.

A young woman interviewed Billy Collins on a show on Youtube, and he was being rude to her. I’ll paraphrase him. He said young poets today haven’t read the essentials like the works I mentioned above and that they needed to devote 10,000 hours to reading poetry, which sounded a bit excessive to me. He also said they needed to learn iambic pentameter. They write bad poetry and post it on Instagram.

I can agree with what he meant by what they’ve posted there. It’s not the best poetry, and it feels rushed, kind of how I’ve rushed these blogs, but at least they’re trying.

I’ve tried my hand at poetry by writing a sonnet every morning, but I wouldn’t dare show it to anyone. They’re like my journal entries…just for me. It would be pompous and careless and irresponsible to post those poems. I’m better off keeping them private than upsetting the masters, dead or alive, by showing them on Instagram or some other social platform.

What is poetry anyway? I know it’s expression, but there are so many types of it. Most poetry these days is free verse. Contemporaries said to hell with verse. “We’ll break the rules and make our own.”

That’s lazy to me.

Then again, I prefer classical paintings over impressionistic paintings. You can’t convince me that Monet did better than Da Vinci.

I remember memorizing Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.” I forgot it because it was too complicated. It was a villanelle, a form that was invented in Italy during the Renaissance. The rhyme scheme is intricate, not the simpler ABAB, CDCD, et cetera. I’ve written a few villanelles, but like I said, I won’t show them to anyone. They’re too embarrassing. They’re stashed somewhere in my piles of legal pads which I journal in every morning. I throw those legal pads out after a while, although it’s painful to do. It’s like throwing old clothes away that I might need later. They hold a sentimental value, but those villanelles were just something I was fooling around with.

I wanted to take a poetry class at a community college but couldn’t find one. You would think they would offer them if they offered arts and crafts classes. But oh well. I guess I’ll have to learn on my own like I have with everything else.