“I feel differently about poetry these days.”

I feel differently about poetry these days. It’s hard to say just how, except to say that I don’t feel the same. I wonder what that means, but I’m not sure it matters much. I write less, I think less, I care less. At times it feels like peace or what I might have imagined peace felt like before I felt like this. The wind draws on the blinds, a plane passes overhead, the cat announces, “I am here!” I might have run to scribble these into a poem, and then follow each thought as each thought comes, and finally try to hear what it is that troubles me or what calls to me for celebration or praise. But it seems praise enough merely to register the sensations, and if anything troubles me it isn’t more than the obvious, which is, after all, no more or less than most people’s troubles. Life is unsatisfying here, my will wasn’t enough there, I wanted more and gave less where I might have given everything.

Maybe it isn’t poetry I feel differently about. But it seems as if I’ve crossed some threshold. ”What next?” I ask, and I’m not surprised by what comes. Or, if I am surprised, I am no longer surprised by the surprise. This world is marvelous. These ten thousand things, as the Chinese say, are all marvels to behold. And I might even add to this marvelous world yet one more testament. Here a new book begins. Its first page says, “I know before I know.” Its last line I might already read. If this sounds cryptic, itis because my first perceptions or my first attempts at articulating always are. I know that now about myself, and would ask you – whoever you are – not to be surprised or put off or worried. Soon I’ll say exactly what I mean. By then, for me anyway, it will be all but untrue. It will be a fact. For now it is so alive in me no words touch it. And the ones that come close don’t suffice.

–Adam Penna, “Where is Poetry Now?”

The Jam’s “That’s Entertainment” lyric half-pager from “Like Punk Never Happened: Brian McCloskey’s Smash Hits Archive.