Poetry Is a Sickness

     Ed Bok Lee’s “Poetry Is a Sickness” speaks of how poets attempt to find beautiful things to write of when they start, but all that comes to mind are the dark--and sometimes gruesome--things that can be seen on the news or in life. Lee states that poetry is sick because of this fact, but poets still try to write something gorgeous, and in trying, make the ugly things shine in a new light: a beautiful light. This poem exemplifies the writing choices made by Walter Whitman and Allen Ginsberg in their poems. Whitman, for example, writes of the rampant death tolls the United States faced during the Civil War, but he turns it around by writing of the subsequent growth in culture, morality, and democracy. Ginsberg, similarly to Whitman, writes of the issues with society in the Cold War era, but by putting a slightly comedic twist on his wording, Ginsberg makes the problems seem truly mundane and somewhat childish. “Poetry Is a Sickness” ultimately shows that a poet’s true role is to make beautiful the ugly things in life.

Author: Patrick Pacheco