The poor will never be in my poems.
First, there’s the sentimental factor,
which critics can never abide.
Like cliché, the sentimental is the kiss of death.
Second, whatever is poor about me may as well hide.
Third, the poor trigger three rhetorical tropes:
communism, when the poor are not to blame for being poor,
cheap melodrama, when they are,
and money-saving tips.
The whole point of poetry
is that you are never poor. You lie
on the couch, remembering the daffodils,
you lift your head up with Shakespeare
as he points you to the right comparisons.
It is always this way with poetry.
You enter a poem by Keats
and are immediately wealthy.