About the Poems - CC
About the Poems
by Crystal Curry Sometimes people don't understand what I mean when I say "poetry should do exactly nothing." I think of a poem as a closed system – a strange and uncomfortable artifact – that stands on its own in a world just barely familiar to it. It is depressed and anti-social with a hell of a hygiene problem. Or it's glib and psychopathic and puts its initials on everything. Good poems collect human finger bones. I get sad when people want poetry to get out of bed and change the world and then tell NPR about it. I don't think poems are ready for the world until they're clearly, clearly not. Every time I write a poem, I have this in mind. I don't usually make it. And my failure makes it all the more gorgeous.