Poetry That Grabs Your Attention
I agree with you that poetry, by virtue of its compressed form, needs to grab the reader's attention immediately in the way that prose does not. While readers of a novel might be willing to read a book for thirty or so pages if they are assured that the action will eventually 'pick up,' a poem needs to use intense images and arresting language from the first line onward. Every word must be special, and perhaps this is even truer of poems like Dorianne Laux's poem "The Laundromat" which is about an apparently mundane subject. I agree with you that the Laux poem brings out the apparently animalistic, tumultuous side of this ordinary environment, and as a result of reading the poem, I will never look at the Laundromat in the same way.
I also agree with you that what is so wonderful about this poem is that it takes aspects of life that the reader can identify with, such as 'checking people out' in a public space like the Laundromat and makes them the subject of great poetry. Modern poetry does not have to be about epic subjects such as fights between the gods and great men and women: it can be about ordinary people like you and me. It does not even have to be about the natural world, but also about human nature and common aspects of industrialized city life. The poet understands that the humble Laundromat can be like ancient jungle 'watering holes' where everyone crowds in, looking for some sort of a connection with other beings despite their wariness of strangers. She also is very clever in her use of humor, not-so-subtly bringing up that Laundromats are frequently pick-up scenes with her use of Amazon metaphors: "I want to lie down in the dry dung/and dust and twist to scratch my back. I want to / stretch and prowl and grow lazy in the shade," she writes, even though of course, just like everyone else the Laundromat, she is likely to leave unfulfilled, with her clothes clean and little else to show for her adventure in the wilderness of the Laundromat.
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