February 2016
Kenneth Salzmann
kensalzmann@gmail.com
kensalzmann@gmail.com
After a career divided between working in the arts and working for newspapers, I have arrived at a point where I can spend more time on my own creative work. While I’ve always written and published poetry, I’ve certainly never been as prolific before, and it has never been my primary pursuit before. These days, I live part of the year in Woodstock, New York, and part of the year in a magical pueblo in Mexico.
Author's Note: Maybe it’s fitting that this unlikely little poem should be published in Verse-Virtual. After all, I have to think that a lot of the members of the V-V community will recognize something of the workshop experience that led me to write “Why not every poem is a sex poem.”
Here’s how it came to be: Early last summer, I was one of 12 participants in novelist/poet/activist Marge Piercy’s annual juried poetry intensive. On a day when we were charged with writing a poem using a single extended metaphor, about half of the workshoppers showed up with freshly-minted sex poems. Sex lends itself to metaphor, after all. I wasn’t a part of that half, but I couldn’t help but write this for the next session. Then my filmmaker friend Ronn Kilby* decided to work on it as well . . .
Author's Note: Maybe it’s fitting that this unlikely little poem should be published in Verse-Virtual. After all, I have to think that a lot of the members of the V-V community will recognize something of the workshop experience that led me to write “Why not every poem is a sex poem.”
Here’s how it came to be: Early last summer, I was one of 12 participants in novelist/poet/activist Marge Piercy’s annual juried poetry intensive. On a day when we were charged with writing a poem using a single extended metaphor, about half of the workshoppers showed up with freshly-minted sex poems. Sex lends itself to metaphor, after all. I wasn’t a part of that half, but I couldn’t help but write this for the next session. Then my filmmaker friend Ronn Kilby* decided to work on it as well . . .
Why not every poem is a sex poem
Some poems are theological, in a biblical sense.
Some are heroic tales of gland-to-gland combat.
Some political poems turn on a joint session of congress.
A poem can be about completing the jigsaw puzzle,
crashing the custard truck, making a magical sandwich,
sharpening a pencil, parallel parking, or exploring a mine shaft.
A poem can be about checking the oil, churning the butter,
Driving Miss Daisy, filling the gas tank, hitting a home run,
jumping the turnstile, planting a parsnip, or disappointing the wife.
You’ll discover many poems about putting bread in the oven,
plowing through the bean field, passing the gravy, whitewashing
the picket fence, peeling the tree bark, or taking Grandma to Applebee’s.
So why did you think sex has to be the thrust of every poem?
* Video by Ronn Kilby Creative
©2016 Kenneth Salzmann