Rhoades Less Traveled:

Have I mentioned that I read poetry?

It’s not something you boast about. In fact, very often, because most folks don’t read poetry, making it a bit of a mystery, it raises suspicions and creates awkwardness. Quote Homer or Shakespeare or even Bob Dylan to your ordinary, harmless person and you get a possum in the headlights look.

Well, so be it. I’ll continue to read — just to name a few homegrown poets — Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, William Carlos Williams and contemporaries such as Mark Strand, Sharon Olds and Stephen Dunn.

It’s no use trying to explain it other than to say that you’re entering the realm of the unknown on an exploratory mission without, a seasoned reader finds, any idea of a destination.

Poetry is, I think, the story told by the subconscious after one’s ganglia have apprehended and invariably made contact with the world. In other words, how a person feels the magnitude of existence. Perhaps the poet feels it more — I don’t know.

But one thing seems sure: These tactile dalliances with nature are unforgettable, affect us deeply and require an expression, whether it be in dreams, in poetry or, for that matter, criminal acts.

Full disclosure: I also write poetry. I often warn my longtime girlfriend not to engage me in debate because she’s up against a “minor American poet.”

I’ve got perhaps a couple hundred publications in literary journals to my credit.

Just so you have a clue, and because we poets are shameless, I’ll share one of my more popular poems, which found its way into the anthology “Best New Poets of 2008”:

It’s snowing in Santiago de Chuco

And no one can believe it,

not the lonesome, backroad dogs or the insane.

The stars blew up, says a man stand-

Ing at the window in his socks. The world

is changing; those twins, hope and dread,

snip each other’s wounds and show them off

in vases. The vases are clay and the earth

is breaking off in pieces. Cesar Vallejo

Is dead, non-ambulatory, not there in

a winged-back chair in a book-filled room,

but it’s snowing in Santiago de Chuco

and no one can believe it.

But enough about my lame effort at resurrecting Vallejo, who happens to be my favorite poet.

The reason I’m writing this column is because Interim City Editor Michael Miller — at that late afternoon hour when I was out of ideas and desperate — suggested it.

I want to take it a step further: a poetry contest among our readers (lovers of poetry, I know you’re out there).

Yes, judging, which will be performed by Miller, who runs a press that prints poetry books, and me will be subjective.

But let’s face it: Poetry ain’t science.

Send your poem to [email protected]. Today is Aug. 7 so we’ll set a Sept. 7 deadline on submissions.

The winner will have his or her poem published on the front page of the Daily Pilot, which amounts to a crude form of immortality.

All in all, not a bad payoff.

Editor BRADY RHOADES may be reached at (714) 966-4607 or at [email protected].