The Poetry Lesson

Ever heard Andrei Codrescu on NPR? He’s a funny guy. Well, I just read a short book by him called POETRY LESSON. It’s a rambling satirical account of the first day of teaching an Intro to Poetry Class. (Codrescu taught for 20 yrs at Louisiana State University.) There are some naughty passages. (I didn’t know they were in there. Really.) And there are personal anecdotes about a lot of poets—Codrescu likes to ‘name drop.’ And hilarious scenarios of the youth culture. 

It is sophisticated humor. A couple of times he uses the term “herm” as a word that combines ‘his’ and ‘her,’ as in “Each student had to choose herm poet guide.” I underlined some colorful phrases, like when the poetry professor tells the students they are going to take a break, he writes, “I watched them scatter like bladders with legs out the door.” Satirizing academia as irrelevant and hypocritical, he says, “tips and hints on how to really live are rarer than asparagus stalks in Eskimo cuisine.” 

The book is published by Princeton University Press. It’s a non-serious serious book. If you like poetry you might enjoy this romp through poetic and pedagogical mine/mind fields. Or you might just like the naughty parts. I did.

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