Someone Said

By Adam Stone

Someone said poetry was art
Like storytelling, conversation, or flirting
And it poured forth from their soul
Because to them, the message was more important than the mode
Until

Someone said poetry was art
Like music
So they gave it a beat
Arranged their thoughts by vowel sounds and consonance
They sang it to their loves
They sang it to the streets
They sang it to their kings
Until some king or some queen or some scholar or

Someone said poetry was art
Like logic, or literature
And they shackled it into categories:
Rhetoric/Romance/Mystery
Modernism/Post Modernism/Cubism
Cuban Verse/Free Verse/Blank Verse
Sestinas/Sonnets/Raps or Hymns
Until

Someone said poetry was art
Like paintings or sculptures
And they hung it next to their Norman Rockwells
Friends, passing the poem on the way to the television room
Were forced to either comment on its “depth”
Or else dismiss them completely
Until, in passing

Someone said poetry was not art
But math
A finite set of answers to a given question
Few variables
Each simile assimilated into psychological profile

Because poetry was neither art nor math
But science
An alkaline measurement of a person's sanity
Less expensive than a doctor
More damaging than medication
Poetry had become a type of therapy
Like boxing or counting down from ten
Or art
I seem to remember

Someone said poetry was art
And they lifted it with their tongues
To the ears of those who would not look at it on paper
They enhanced the text with tone and texture
They taught it to their children
They sang it in their showers
But they dared not bring it out in public alone
For fear of embarrassment or opinions

Until someone said that poetry was art
Like dancing or drama
So they shouted it from street corners
Brought it to their museums, their coffeehouses, their bars
They commented on it
Compared it, contrasted it, comprehended it, competed with it
And they called these competitions “Slams”
Until one day

Someone slamming said poetry was art
At a price
Peace, souls, and entirely too much free time
To limit their thoughts to three minute time intervals
Someone didn't want to be known as a slam poet
Or a SPOKEN WORD PO-ET
Or a scholarly written poet
Someone just wanted to be known as a poet
Because somehow somewhere they'd heard that

Someone said poetry was art
Like thinking, living or breathing
And to be limited to either page or voice
Would be like being given the choice between inhaling—
Or exhaling
Sure

Someone said that poetry was art
But nobody bought it