It’s not too far removed from the turn of the year, still a good time for resolutions, improvement.  What better resolution than to Be Perfect?  There’s a gentleman who would like to tell you how.  The only problem: he’s a poet. 

We’ve fallen away from an ideal of poetry as an agent of self-perfection, I think.  Even widely read poets, even those whose gentle proclamations may very well have bettered the lives of their readers, not to mention those poets who speak in anger for an entire voiceless people, become agents of justice and outcry, even they are heard, I think, with indulgence only.  We do not expect those around us to read poetry, and might not think well of them if they do.  I love poetry and my own reactions really are not so far from that quiet condescension, that scorn buried under the culturally ordained platitudes of respect we all mouth when someone close to us, or a stranger even, mentions a love of poetry.  We certainly have no expectations that poetry might better us, might be necessary to the sort of person we’d like to become.  I’m often convinced that my own consideration for poetry might be a weakness. 

Poets, most poets, do not think this way, and that’s for the best.  We want our craftsmen, our teachers, masons, executioners, to have faith in their work.  They are better for it.  But we are, I am, not a poet.  I can afford not to ignore how very silly and worthless poetry can be.

Ron Padgett, simultaneously one of the funnier and most heartfelt poets writing today, believes that poetry is worth something.  He also understands just how ridiculous that belief is.  His poem "How to be Perfect", part of which you can find after the jump, is a miracle of balance.  Straightforward platitudes abut absurdities and deprecation, all in Padgett’s characteristically simple voice.  The full poem is much longer, but I’ve chosen two passages from it to give you a taste.  It may not make you perfect, but, if Ron is right and our unthought dismissal is wrong, even reading it could make you better than you are now.

Click here to read How to Be Perfect by Ron Padgett

Art by George Schneeman (with Ron Padgett) circa 1975