I just churned out a pretty awful poem and now my head hurts. The assignment was to write a response poem to one of the selections in the contemporary American section of our course packet. Of course, "contemporary" means "incomprehensible" in poetry-speak. It's gotten to the point in literature where you can only be great if no one knows what in the world you mean. Same with the visual arts. While a good deal of this stuff may be profound, another sizable chunk is probably crap but everyone's afraid to admit it.

I did learn something in my poetry class that got me thinking. (Unfortunately, I think I've forgotten all the ideas it prompted.) Everyone knows Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," right? I myself had to memorize it in eighth grade English. Apparently it's not the simple little poem about pretty trees it appears to be. Rather, it's about losing your soul to beauty. It's ironic, isn't it? Beauty touches the soul; the soul creates beauty. But once you give yourself over to beauty, you lose the one think that makes beauty possible.