Book Terrors...! I

More poetry inspired by DFW:

It's uncomfortable to suggest
that literate reading is somehow
in danger when I'm not sure
it's ever really been in fashion.

I believe that we've always been
far more interested in popular
material, and that's how it
all got started in the first place,
what the bards sang about.

The problem seems more,
to me, about the extreme
abundance of such material,
that everyone can get this
stuff published, and that
there's no room and hardly
any real attention outside
out ladies reading circles
to anything that might
actually challenge you.

We start it in school,
scaring students into
thinking there are right
and wrong ways
to read the serious kind,
sober minds that must
be suppressed in order
to forget how much
of a pain it was
the first time around.

The problem with literate
reading and writing is
that it's stuck in the same
traps as everything else,
exclusive, constricting circles
that don't know what they have
and therefore hurt more
than help what they're
fighting to save.

But as I said,
the situation is
not as dire
as it seems.

But we are all
alarmists.