1. Every year, you take a few months off from opening your eyes to get more in touch with your inner being. How can you really see what’s inside when there’s so much outside yourself to look at? Also, echolocation is fun.
2. Poetry reminds you too much of Elliot Smith, whose death you have yet to recover from. A lot of people like Elliot Smith, but nobody really GETS him like you do. Nobody really gets the something behind the “Ballad of Big Nothing” like you do. Or that he actually wouldn’t have minded being featured on the Twilight soundtrack.
3. You’re always on the go, and get motion sickness if you read while in transit. Sometimes it really seems like your inner ear just doesn’t want you to be cultured or have fun, you know? Plus, you wouldn’t want the nausea/possible vomiting to cloud your thoughts on their (probably) exceptional work, which brings us to our next point:
4. If you did read their poetry, you would get so jealous about not having written it yourself that you’d become intolerable to be around. Because your poet friend is DEFINITELY a genius. Or at least someone who would believe that you think they are.
5. A severe head injury left you unable to read in any language besides Icelandic. What a crazy turn of events: you didn’t even understand Icelandic prior to your injury! You wouldn’t want to pop their precious poem into Google translator and lose the musicality produced when a work is read in its original tongue.