The Not Poetry Circle

As I am too idle to walk all of the way

to my poetry bookshelves,

I shall have to paraphrase Keith Douglas instead:

What the critics fail to realise

is that bad poetry is not poetry at all,

 

although my agreement with this sentiment

depends on my mood.

 

And just now, I have read about

the ‘intolerable poetry’ of American poets

(excluding Billy Collins, presumably,

because he wrote the phrase).

 

Does intolerable poetry inhabit the same space

as bad poetry,

unable to traverse the circular border

which keeps them trapped in the poetry Venn diagram

demarcating the peculiar sub-genre: ‘not poetry’ poetry?

 

I think of other poemy things

which may share the space

of this odd circle.

 

Dadaist poetry, which is all very well in principle,

but only occasionally in practice?

 

An English sestina,

when it’s not written in blank verse,

an abomination borne, I suspect, of that heady mix

of sublime incompetence and infuriating laziness

perfected by so many of us

who claim the title ‘poet’?

 

Anything villanelle-related (as if that needed saying):

what the critics fail to remember

is that villanelles are not poetry at all?

 

It could be a never-ending list,

depending on your poetic beliefs:

‘modern’ poetry and imagist poetry

and rhyming poetry and free verse and

slam poetry and experimental poetry

and on and on and on

until we find ourselves saying,

‘all poetry is not poetry at all.’