When did you last read Poetry?

I won’t ask when you last bought any because you answer and mine would probably have poets everywhere in fits of despair and generating a thousand maudlin poems.

I must confess, prior to this February, the only poetry I had read recently was by Jennifer Mills, a chap book titled Treading Earth (which I bought) and then it was an initial reading in 2010, followed by isolated dipping in and out of the text since then.  Prior to that it was the late 1990’s, around the time I was studying Elizabethan Literature and 19th Century American Literature courses at University?

And I ask my self why?  Why the long break?  Poems are short.  Easy to read.  You could polish of a collection in a couple of hours.

And therein lies part of the problem at least for me. For the past five years in addition to being a reviewer I have been a consumer of information on a daily basis, scanning pages for keywords, gleaning information.  I haven’t left time for the artful arrangement of words to deliver anything but the information, the gist.

I wonder if this is why poetry is not read by too many who aren’t poets themselves?  Are we too used (those of us that still read) to being immersed by the novel?  Are we perhaps not willing to invest in giving poetry our time? 

Your thoughts?