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I got a "homework assignment" last weekend, to go and read a certain poet. Like a good kid, I went to the library on Sunday and plunked down in a chair to read. The volume was very slim, and I started to read through it the same way I read everything else - as though this is Mission Impossible, and what I'm reading may combust at any moment and it's my job to digest the information as quickly as possible.

Turns out you can't read poetry this way. I was an English major at one point, and I remember being able to write thirty-page papers on eight lines of poetry without batting an eyelash. Them days is gone, friends. I have long suspected that I'm getting stupider each year, and on Sunday I could feel myself getting stupider each minute. I had no idea what I was reading. It could have been in another language, for all the sense I made of it.

This is tragic. It was one thing when I realized that calculus had permanently left my brain, but I always thought I would have literature. So instead I brought the "His Dark Materials" trilogy to the check-out and got the heck out of there. By the way - that's a great series if you haven't read it. Just don't ask me for poetry recommendations.