Poetry Is . . .

I have to give credit for the first line of each stanza of this short poem to a friend I was talking to at a conference I’m attending this week. We were talking about poetry and other funny things—like the fact that mushrooms aren’t vegetables and neither are tomatoes—and his two statements got me thinking about what poetry is. I told him I was going to write a whole poem, post it on my blog, then link to his website (which has nothing to do with poetry, vegetables, or turkey). So here’s his site: Net for Lawyers. (He’s the one with the beard in the picture on the home page.)

Poetry Is . . .

Poetry is a vegetable
Essential for a balanced literary diet
But something many people avoid like the plague
It should make up at least a third of the reading plate
Yet we’d rather just take a bite or two, if that

Poetry is turkey
A healthy and delicious source of literary protein
But we relegate it to Thanksgiving and Christmas
Indulge instead on Internet news sites or trashy fiction
When we should be eating it more often instead