I slip them into letters, post them in public, and sprinkle them into everything from congratulations to condolences. I'm always sharing poems.

But my enthusiasm is sometimes dimmed. It happened again last week.

I don't like poetry, a writer-friend told me.

I gathered my indignation and began my poetry pep talk.

And stopped.

She was right. I sometimes don't like poetry, too. I get frustrated by clever phrasing, put off by evasive “meaning,” and annoyed with ponderous puff. All that suffering. All that longing. So much inner gaze. Some days I want nothing to do with poets or poetry.

And then, I find a stellar poem. I climb into the poem like a kid in a tree, reaching higher and higher for the best view and the perfect perch. And then, because I've tasted how words can bend and sing, I clamber down to earth to write my own.

So I say to my friend, Yes, yes, I know. But poems aren't secrets or tests. You don't need to analyze. You just need to feel.

She listens for a moment that is followed by standoff silence. I stop waving the poetry flag and we turn to fiction instead.

Still, I can’t shake her insistence against poetry and my mighty pull for it.

Everything is poem, I say in an argument I keep to myself.

Every song and psalm, every phrase and page. The world is full of words that tilt and spin, that clarify and calm. All the world is a poem!

Then I stop channeling Walt Whitman and sink back into myself.

The world is full of battles that I’m tired of fighting. Does poetry really warrant (another) dividing line?

* * *

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