From the Whistler

When Poetry Is a Crime

I was strolling through the Lindbergh terminal a few months back when I heard, over the PA system, that a passenger had left a small black book behind on Northwest Flight 525. "The book appears to be filled with ... poetry," the announcer added, with apparent glee. I was hoping he would go on and read a couple of the poems, subjecting several thousand airport passengers to bona fide, unadulterated art, rather than commercials, sports, the latest casualties in Iraq, etc. Actually, it turns out that a great many of us do write poetry at one time or other in our lives, though few go so far as to actually sending it to a publisher. It’s a way to push ideas and emotions out of our mind and into the world, to order and codify them and, if we are lucky, transform them into something beautiful.

Expressing yourself in poetry, however, is becoming dangerous—at least if you’re a teenager attending Humboldt High School. Last fall a Humboldt student was arrested based on "dark" poetry he had written. According to the Pioneer Press, his poems and stories, which referred to death, suicide, and a gun, were discovered in a notebook that was turned in to school authorities. Principal John Bianchi, apparently fearing a "Columbine" incident was in the offing, called the St. Paul police. The boy eventually pleaded guilty to a charge of disorderly conduct.

Okay, are these people complete idiots? Are they really so naive as to believe everything a teenager (or anyone) writes in a poem or story is the unadulterated truth? That they’re not just blowing off a little steam in words? If so then the next logical step in this Orwellian process would be to arrest Steve Thayer for contemplating murder and Stephen King on suspicion of being a psychopath.

Though the writing of poetry seems a popular as ever, there seems to be very few readers, apart from other poets and alarmed school officials. Is this because no one is interested, or because the contemporary poetry being published, mostly by MFA grads, is dullsville? In an effort to gain some empirical data on the issue, Whistling Shade conducted a poetry survey, the results of which can be found on page 6. Does Byron rate higher than Billy Collins? Do readers prefer Emily Dickenson to Anne Sexton? The answers may surprise you!

Let me close by mentioning our new column, Shady Dealings, debuts on page 6. Local writer D. Garcia Wahl will explore the history and aspirations of the Twin Cities writing scene, no doubt raising some controversies, but hopefully without getting arrested.

- Joel Van Valin