What Sparks Poetry

“All sex is a body trying / to tell a story with a hand / over its mouth,” James Allen Hall writes in “Erotic Crime Thriller.” That is the crux of the poem for me, and points to all the questions it poses. Like, what does sex mean, between any two bodies? When it’s illicit? What does sex mean when your body, or the body of the person you’re with, could be the site of, a spreader of disease? What does a body mean when all the sex it has is considered illicit; when its very desire is seen as a disease? And what does a movie mean when it tells us the story of a time just before a tragedy? In watching it after the fact, is it possible to just appreciate the film for what it is, or will we inevitably look for signs of what’s to come? Will we inevitably wish we could go back in time to the world of the film and change it somehow, and therefore save the real world, the one we live in, from what hadn’t yet happened? The body of this poem comes to you, smelling of sweat and leather, and it may have a hand over its mouth but it still asks these questions, tells these stories, and demands the reader listen.

After reading “Metropolitan” by Patty Nash, there was new life in the scratch papers, refrigerator to-dos, lost notes — all scribbles had gained significance! The poem showed me that a convenient numbered list can hold everything, including unlimited sinks. All of the lists I make to fend off anxiety and discombobulation can be more than their utility. As a writer, this taught me that a mundane form should not be overlooked, and to shift my perspective to discover and create poetry in my routine writing. Rendering a day at the museum in this way with vivid imagery made me want to go wander through one myself, with a notebook at the ready.

One Poetry Daily that struck a resonant chord was May 31, 2024’s "Sad Rollercoaster" by Jared Harél. The poem chronicles the summer in which his daughter came to understand Death. In second grade, I wrote a dirge contemplating the black void of nothingness. This prompted a meeting with my teacher, parents, and principal. I explained the poem as an attempt to wrap my head around the notion of Death, rather than as a call for help. The second-grade mind is hard to decipher, and the bleak existential tone didn’t help. Now, as both a parent and an educator, I appreciate the additional check into authorial intent. Teaching high school kids sometimes elicits flights of fancy that raise eyebrows and might be a similar cause for concern. Yet the poet in me understands the need to explore thought into poetry with no regrets too. Harél’s poem awakened these vivid memories and relevant thoughts.

A selection of reader responses to poems from our archive

A collection of our readers' responses to their favorite poems from our archive.