Yes, we are still away at our undisclosed location. But no worries, we left the key to the blog under the mat and today our old friend Min Jin Lee will be stopping by for a little visit. Please treat her nicely. Min Jin's first novel, Free Food For Millionaires, will be published by Warner next year.
Guest Blogger Min Jin Lee
I am a prose writer through and through, yet I stand in awe of the poet. I started to read poetry when I was in my late twenties, never having studied it in school. I didn’t know anyone who read poems, and it was my private thing. It still is, I guess. Every now and then, I take continuing education classes in poetry at the Y with retirees who grew up in an era where they were encouraged to recite their favorites. I took a prosody class last year with David Yezzi who is a poet, and everyone had to memorize a poem. I learned “The Continuous Life” by Mark Strand. There is a line in the middle: “Explain that you live between two great darks, the first/ With an ending, the second without one, that the luckiest/ Thing is having been born, that you live in a blur/ Of hours and days, months and years, and believe/ It has meaning, despite the occasional fear/ You are slipping away with nothing completed, nothing/ To prove you existed.” Whenever I get to that bit, I have to close my eyes. That’s what poetry does for me, it makes me pause. Yeah, that’s awe for me.