April is National Poetry Month but so far I haven’t had much room to think, much less contemplate poetry. Still, as I muddled through our taxes, Patricia Lockwood’s poem “Government Spending” wriggled its way to the surface of my brain. Mainly the way she said the words “government spending” in an interview at KCUR, the NPR affiliate in Kansas City, where I was an intern in 2014.
She said the poem was inspired by the news’ constant drum beat on “government spending”, and somewhere in the monotony, she discovered she liked the way those words rolled off her tongue. She makes “government spending” sounded rich, indulgent. An irritating buzzword becomes melodious. That’s the power of poetry: to cut through the noise, grab hold of language, and wrest meaning out of it. Or, in this case, humor.
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