A Plea For The Case Of Poetry
She steps into a world of books, there may be millions there.
Passes under the bold B and the bold N.
The smell of coffee hangs heavy in the air. Pungent dark soil acid rich. Trademark of the brand.
And then her heart begins to race, or rather did it slow. At the sight of the section marked, not prose.
So small, as if a slight. So hidden, as if from shame. So narrow, as if to be a step away from invisible.
It, the section marked Poetry.
And there she learned what others knew, that there would always be just these few.
The precious jewels, ones penned by Oliver, Colllins, Frost and such.
That shelves and rows, long deep and wide would not be needed to house the ones that bind the words of Poet.
Oh there were many in the store. Plenty for the masses.
But the heart goes looking for the ones that don’t take 367 pages to tell the story.
With plots that twist and turn and round the bend, a trail of 95 charachters, all ripe and developed richly.
There is death and drama, suspense and gore, the author delights, you’ve been strung along.
With storylines and subplot and subsubplots thick with trails and tales, long and winding, longwinded, long
suffering. The epic. With perfect punctuation.
Prose, the never ending we are almost there, the author woos you in.
The end is not as you had dreamed, no joy in a poet’s brief and pithy telling.
But now she goes the way of those and wanders off verbosely.
And like the poet in the corner simply lost in thought,
she lost her way to build her case for more bookcases
at the neighborhood Barnes and Noble.
Joining joyfully with Emily for Imperfect Prose
elizabeth w. marshall 