It seems that everything these days is a subscription: magazines, newspapers, cable TV, cell phone service, blog feeds, music downloads, massive multiplayer online games. With the new year, I've been trying to cut back on those things that take so much time to read them, mainly because I just don't read them closely or well. So why did I sign up for some private school English teacher's email service to deliver a poem-a-day? Because my mother-in-law sent it to me.

Actually, that may have been the initial reason, but the reason I'm staying subscribed to Mr. Tex Tourais's Poem-a-Day service is that it's good and interesting. Tex (and believe me, it takes some chutzpah--or, as we say in Texas, because very few Yiddish speakers live there, cajones--to go by that nickname) isn't serving up the same old poems that you've seen a thousand times before. Instead, he's picking short poems by living poets that illuminate something about poetry--either a form, a style, or an attitude. I was especially taken by today's (Day 77) selection, "Man with Wooden Leg Escapes Prison" by James Tate, as its that kind of tall tale that we Texans think are funny, but told in that shaggy dog voice that both screams, "we're kidding you" as well as "well, maybe we are, and maybe we aren't." Laurie Anderson could get away with this kind of short story poem. Also this week was a villanelle selection that Tex provided some commentary on, including exactly what a villanelle is for those of us whose college poetry class was a couple of decades ago or who never had one of those classes to begin with as well as touting the most famous instance of the form, Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle Into the Night." I've likely learned more about modern poetry in this one week than I have in the last ten years, and that's covering a time period when I was getting an MFA in creative writing and could have been suspected of being exposed to some of this stuff.

Maybe it's because the messages come from someone called Tex, but it's refreshing to read poetry without the stuffiness and airs that often come attached to the form, plus, because you're reading it and not trapped in some open-mic night or creative writing seminar, you don't have to suffer "poetry voice," that wispy, breathy reading affected by would-be poets, thinking that if their voice is beautiful (sweet, smooth and soft), then their words will be, too. Pfui. You should read poetry like you live: rough and ready for more!