What I Like About Poetry by John R. Haws
	Listen to these two phrases. "... the lick of light".  How can light lick anything?  Where is its tongue?  Where are the taste buds?  "... the sharp aftertaste of late evening".  Since when does late evening have an aftertaste, sharp or otherwise?  Such trash!  I despise poems full of this kind of meaningless dribble.  I hate the juxtaposition of such dissimilar things.  The author tries to make one-thing mean something-else.  In the end, all the author does is make both things look and sound absolutely ridiculous.
	Simple is better.  Clean words with clear meaning.  Direct and to the point.  I especially like poems that set up the reader for an expected ending, and then denies him or her that ending.  I like poems that give the reader a kick, or bite or scratch at the end.  Life is like that.  Things never turn out quite the way we expect them to.  Life is always different than our expectations of it.  That's what makes it so damn interesting.
	It's easy to write in a predictable way.  It's easy to write such that even your dog or your favorite pet knows what's coming next.  I can't even stand to read such stuff.  I must confess, I find a lot of that around in print.  Likewise, it's easy to write in a lofty obscure way - a way so vague and confusing that even you don't know what it means.  It's easy to throw some words on a page and indent them in an odd and peculiar manner.  It's easy to say one knows how to write.
	What is not easy is the work of taking the simplest of ideas and giving it a new look, a view from a different angle, a different twist, a thought here-to-fore not considered.  Aye, therein lies the rub.  This is what separates real writers from rough wantabees.
	August 2002 Return to Essays