Falling Out of Love with Lyric Poetry

Ten years ago, I stopped writing lyric poetry. I had a couple of slim, well-received collections to my name, and my poetry occasionally appeared in a magazine with pedigree, like Poetry. One time, an editor at The New Yorker even mailed a personalized, encouraging rejection on letterhead. (They rebuffed poems by paper in the good old days.) Still, the cupboard was no longer stocked with stanzas. Perhaps I needed a break, a sabbatical.

A good lyric poem, after all, takes toil. Sometimes a poem will fall out of the sky fully formed like a meteorite, but such cosmic events, though real, are rare. A good lyric poem also takes a toll. Immediately upon finishing your first-person meditation on grandpa’s box