My concentration in college was poetry, a concentration that shelters its students from the real world perhaps more than most college concentrations. When I graduated and found myself suddenly out in the cold reality of this “real world,” I was hit pretty hard. One of my coping mechanisms was to distance myself from that thing I had devoted four years of my life to studying. I didn’t read it much. Didn’t talk about it much. Tried to forget about it a little, I guess.
Now, after nearly five years of bravely facing this real world, I’ve begun rediscovering that familiar urge to read a poem every now and again, be it while sitting at my desk fact checking the price tag of a designer dress or sitting at home in Aspen chopping garlic. All of a sudden something will remind me of a line I once read and I’ll say to myself, “How does the rest of that poem go? I used to love that poem.” It’s then that I’ll turn on my computer (having moved around so much, I’ve had to leave my personal library stashed away in my parents’ attic), and Google the poem in question. It’s a wonderful feeling to have the lines I’ve been looking for pop up on the screen and satisfy the part of me that so suddenly realized the void not having these lines in my life has left.
Plagiarist.com is an old standby when I’m having one of those moments—those moments when I need my poetry fix like a drug addict needs whatever it is he needs. The site is hardly comprehensive, but it’s got a laudable selection of poetry’s biggest bangs. I either go straight to the line that’s on my mind, or scroll through the list of poets from Anna Akhmatova to Adam Zagajewski and window shop for what I’m in the mood for.
Lately, lines from Elizabeth Bishop’s classic “One Art” have been scrolling along the ticker tape at the bottom of my brain. You know, the one that starts, “The art of losing isn’t hard to master….” I think this is because I’m a bit homesick. Some real worlds are better than others, and I love Charlottesville. I really do.