Do You Like It?

by Kay Ryan

How a person becomes a poet is a mystery before which one must simply bow down. Perhaps one is born to it. Indeed, genetic preparations may have been under way for generations before the poet's birth. Snippings and mixings of hereditary materials may have been exactly calculated by some higher hand, one's hapless ancestors thrust together in otherwise unprofitable unions sheerly to produce the very poet one is. It could be that inevitable. It could be that grand and cruel. A person could be certifiably called, and of course this is an attractive theory, with religious overtones. It would be a ferocious religion, because so many generations would be used opportunistically, mined exclusively for their rhyme gene or their understanding of the caesura. But then, poetry is ferocious and opportunistic.

Or one may become a poet through an opposite process. Perhaps one is reduced to it. Instead of being the result of the refinement and purification of the blood until only poetic ichor runs, the poet may be the product of some cataclysmic simplification, much like the simplification that overtook the dinosaurs, wiping them out and leaving the cockroaches. Both cockroach and poet are hardy little survivors, quick and omnivorous. But in any case, such speculations regarding the origin of the poet feast upon the antique and the hideous - always a pleasure, but quite unhelpful to the actual poet in youth. For this is a fact: Though a person may be absolutely destined to be a poet, the person doesn't altogether understand this at first. For a long time the person just feels silly.

It is very like the bewilderment felt by the early evolutionary predecessor of the anglerfish, back before this strange fish had undergone the "five hundred separate modifications" (Stephen Jay Gould's estimate) that it took to develop the fishing lure it now dangles before its cavernous mouth.

As in the case of this early anglerfish, the young poet feels ill-formed, but with glimmers of something yet to be articulated. This condition can go on throughout life, and, in truth, does. For how can the anglerfish ancestor jump ahead to a more satisfying form where the lure actually works? He cannot. And how can the poet evolve beyond the comical, partial creature she is? She cannot. And still, she cannot live indefinitely without forming an opinion regarding immanence and glimmers....

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Kay Ryan (ZYZZYVA 2, 7, 23, 47/48) lives in Fairfax, CA. Her most recent book is Elephant Rocks (Grove).