Advice to the Published Poet

In reading "The Best American Poetry"
(the 2007 edition),
I am struck, in awe and envious of the poets
who show presence through omission.

Occasionally, as I peruse,
a poem hits me on a bruise!--
but then some word I don't use
makes me grab the dictionary.

That's plain scary.

Because now there's a poem
with a whole dictionary in the middle--
an 'elephant-in-the-room' riddle--
telling me, I suppose,
what I ought to know,

and maybe--if I was fifty--
what I would already know (if I was thrifty).
But I still have baby-fat
in my face, on my tummy--

I'm no dummy,
but I'm young.

All of the other baby-fat people I know,
they don't read poems at all, not one.
They don't know Donne

or Li-Young Lee;
they don't take baths with Plath
or, with Dickinson, take a tea.
They think Bishop is a church office
(while thinking me quite a novice)
and believe Whitman is a sample sweet,
so there's no use in mentioning Keats.

I once had a friend who read Sexton
and boy, did it vex him.
He said "What's all this about abortion?"
And I said "Oh, I don't know. A lesson?"

I often long for the days
when people stood on streets in queues
to get their hands on the next Millay,
instead of Grand Theft Auto II.

So listen close, all you poets
with your prizes and your Pushcarts:
I don't know the definitiion of "meretricious,"
but I'm where your poems should start.

-Clare Brewer 5/14/08