Dumbing It Down - A Poem By Thomas Vaultonburg

As a poet a good lesson I have learned over the years is to never evaluate the quality of your own work, especially immediately. I had a of an ancient poet, perhaps Ovid, whose advice to poets was to put your work in a drawer for five years before you ever even considered showing it to anyone. This poem, "Dumbing It Down," was something I found written in a notebook years after I had first written it, and I loved it. I wondered why I hadn't thought it was good enough to include in the rotation of poems I was considering for the next book. Maybe I thought it was too facile. Now Ithink of it as one of my favorite poems I have ever written.

Dumbing It Down

I dumbed it down.
I fed it McNuggets
And put it to sleep
With pop tunes.
I made it join
The Republican party.
I drugged it with
Cable television,
I bribed it with
Guilt-free sex
And threatened it
With religion.
I spent a lifetime
Beating it
Into submission and
The ungrateful bastard
Still writes this poem.

My fourth book, Submerged Structure