Because I am a writer and I teach writing, people expect me to know things about poetry. In truth, I know very little about poetry even though I read a great deal. I am vaguely familiar with various forms — sestina, sonnet, cinquain, ghazal. I am very unfamiliar with the craft of poetics — line break, rhyme, meter, image.
What I do know is that when I read poetry, good poetry, I forget to breathe and my body is suffused with something unnamable — a combination of awe and astonishment and the purest of pleasures. Reading poetry is such a thrill that I often feel like I am getting away with something.
Roxane Gay, “Losing It” in Poetry magazine, January 2017
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