There are poets I have been trying to read for years but still don’t “get.” In other words I don’t understand why they write the way they do, or what others admire in them. It could be that every poet requires a specialized approach, that I need to learn to read all over again each time. What I might reject in one poet slowly acquires value in another. I’ve been reading Jim Brodey recently. How could I not like a poem that begins “Art Blakey is in the furnace. Elvin Jones / is in the pipes” -- or “Where Trane went / Ceravolo survives”? Yet still I resist Brodey somewhat, because of a quality that I can only call “sentimentality.” I am an obdurate reader, to be sure. Most people, on the other hand, do not try to read beyond a certain horizon of taste. For me it is more rewarding to read poetry I do not yet like, examining the reasons for my own stubborness.

Taste is not really a matter of individual preferences. How could millions of people, each acting as an individual, suddenly decide that they like Elvis? It would be like that science-fiction story in which the “law of probability” is temporarily suspended, so that everyone in New York City decides to go to the same Chinese restaurant on the same evening at 6:42 p.m. I feel that my own “taste” is perfectly predictable and coherent, the inexorable product of my cultural formation. This might explain my highly resistant style of reading.