Barbara J. Hamby

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Poetry Day

Today was a poetry day. I haven’t had a poetry day for a very long time. I enjoyed hearing poems read by prize-winning poets, publisher-poets and ordinary poets. Their words carried me out of the very cold room without jarring my aching joints.

When I sat down to read my email, I was thinking about gender differences in poetry. Women don’t seem to write about their sexual exploits, or at least not in the same way that men do.

In my email box was a writers’ ezine that referred to an English (that is, published in England) magazine. I went to the magazine’s website and found the beginning of an article there on the subject of differences in males’ or females’ writing. Unfortunately, I would have to subscribe to get to the meat of the article.

As I get older, I’m less comfortable driving at night, so I get to fewer poetry readings and I miss them.

Even though I didn’t sell a single copy of either of my books, I did buy a couple of poetry *chapbooks. I have a lot of poetry in my book collection that I can read, but it isn’t the same as hearing it in the poet’s voice.

* As defined by a publisher today, a chapbook is 40 pages or less. The origin of the name is in dispute, but one theory is that “chaps” went door-to-door selling various things, including small poetry books, years ago.