Like many think of philosophy, 😆.

First, by the way, I did not receive a subscriber notice of this one. It hit my feed the other day (not sure if it was in "for you" or "following"). I wasn't sure how I wanted to respond, so I waited till now, and I'm still not sure, but I may be qualified to give an interesting answer.

As you know, I write a lot of poems on Medium. What I don't often admit is that while I love writing poems, I don't love reading poems.

I purposely chose to say poems as opposed to poetry, as many of my poems are not what snobs consider poetic. I remember one not snob responding that "people think poems are flowers and rainbows but your poems make me think."

That's one of my favorite responses.

When you say you don't get poetry, perhaps your grouping too much together. It's like saying you don't get music and songs. There's music/songs you get, and music/songs you don't. There's music/songs you love, hate, and everything inbetween.

As you know, I also write essays. My essays may be thought provoking, but they also connect the dots. Poems don't connect the dots, and may trigger thoughts in the reader that I didn't intend. Poems really challenge the reader to form their own thoughts.

Essays can convey feelings and emotions. Those are not the same thing. Essays can too, but not in the same way. Poems are raw. Essays are refined.