I have no idea what a poem is.
I probably say that everything is "the most depressing _____ ever," but right now it's my poetry class. This isn't to suggest anything about the professor (who I like) or my classmates (who seem nice enough) or anything, but merely my own failings as a writer. Somebody asked me a couple of weeks ago in my Fiction class what my concentration was as an English major.
"I..uh...I guess Fiction...but, I mean, right now I'm not even sure if I am a writer."
And it was good that he didn't know me, although a few others heard me and I guess they had read my stuff before and said "Oh no, you are, you are." I can be assured now that two or three other people besides my parents and friends will buy a book if I ever choose to write one, but that does not make me a writer. Being a college student doesn't make you anything but just that.
So: yes, my poetry class. We're reading essay after essay about the habits of a writer, and the lifestyle of a writer, and the passions and the criterion and the thought-process and the waking-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night because you just have to get this shit out and it's to-ta-lly unbearable. Somehow all the world's fiction seems irrelevant and pretentious. And for that reason I cannot bring myself to write a single poem. A measly fucking poem is the hardest thing in the world for me to write.
I am too immature to write a good poem. This is a fact. I do not care much at all about the little things in life, for I spend too much time worrying about romance and death and good poems do not come out of romance and death or, if they do, they are represented by things much smaller. A red wheelbarrow, a cup of coffee, a sparrow or some such bullshit. I do not care about ordinary objects. I care about me, me, me and that does not a good poem make. The same generally applies for Fiction, although every so often I'll be interested in something enough that I can write a story about it, but it's so goddamn hard not to write about me, me, me because what else could possibly be more important?
And speaking of poetry, can we please get into the habit of crediting authors when posting one on Livejournal. God, I hate seeing only a poem flat on my screen and to sit there looking at it with no idea who wrote it. If YOU wrote it, credit yourself. If not, be respectful to the author and those reading it to credit them. It's not that hard.