Wrong?

Sometimes, perhaps, I just need the page.

I'm that person who read so much and spoke so little -- even up until a year or two ago -- that I know many, many words, but don't know how to pronounce most of them.

By that same token, I tend to respond in -- wrong? different? -- ways.

Take, for instance:

-- the fact that I thought the little paint can in the paint program (remember the nineties, people?) was an upside down graduation cap
--that I was the only one to argue against launching the US into WWII in a classroom debate
--that I was the only one to suggest that perhaps a character who does not openly grieve her husband's death in a story I read for a class (I can't remember when) WAS actually grieving

These are little things, but....in particular, that I may not like the contemporary canon of poetry. Or I don't get it. I'm not sure which.

I say this because last night I heard Mark Doty read at Babson.

I thought his poems were very interesting, and very intense. He approached his topics from several very emotional and often very personal angles.

However, perhaps because I've been steeped to the point of sourness in "what poetry should be" for so many years, I felt empty afterwards. I didn't feel as if I had just done something worthwhile for my writing pursuits. For my literary persona.

He had excellent turns and some intense content. But, again, I found myself asking where the bigger picture was, quite a bit of the time.

I don't think this is a fair assessment to him, however. For several reasons, which I have considered this evening:

- I'd never really read him before
- He was reading to a large bunch of disinterested students, who, might I add, really disappointed me in their behavior -- coming and going, constantly.
-I really need to hear something at least three times or read it once or twice to get the full picture.

So how can he bring me the big picture when I'm only getting fractions of the frame?

He can't. It's impossible.

This is why I need the page.

So I'll be picking up some Doty, and inquiring further. So thanks for making me stop and think, Mark Doty. Sometimes I need to slow down.

Particularly since I'm not offering anyone a bigger picture.....or am I? I don't know. It's hard to be objective about art.

Sometimes I just need the damn page.