I like what Elizabeth Alexander has to say about poetry in her poem Ars Poetica #100: I Believe. Here are the last half of the poem:
Poetry is what you find
in the dirt in the corner,
overhear on the bus, God
in the details, the only way
to get from here to there.
Poetry (and now my voice is rising)
is not all love, love, love,
and I'm sorry the dog died.
Poetry (here I hear myself loudest)
is the human voice,
and are we not of interest to each other?
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New Year's Resolutions and Poetry
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A passion for poetry
Excellent choice SaffronSaffron wrote:I like what Elizabeth Alexander has to say about poetry in her poem Ars Poetica #100: I Believe. Here are the last half of the poem:
Poetry is what you find
in the dirt in the corner,
overhear on the bus, God
in the details, the only way
to get from here to there.
- Saffron
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Re: New Year's Resolutions and Poetry
Are you finding time to read the occasional poem? Here I'll help -- for you:DWill wrote:Did you know that poetry is one of most useless things out there? Yes, and that is just why it is so important. It has virtually no ability to advance our careers or make us richer, or even to make us appear smarter than we are.... that I forget to do the reading that has less social utility but the most spiritual payoff: poetry.
This year I RESOLVE (and hope people help hold me to it) to read poetry often. That is all, not to write any poetry, but just to read it. Readers are what poetry most lacks. Poetry does not really lack poets, but without readers it is a cripple.
The Uses of Poetry
by William Carlos Williams
I've fond anticipation of a day
O'erfilled with pure diversion presently,
For I must read a lady poesy
The while we glide by many a leafy bay,
Hid deep in rushes, where at random play
The glossy black winged May-flies, or whence flee
Hush-throated nestlings in alarm,
Whom we have idly frighted with our boat's long sway.
For, lest o'ersaddened by such woes as spring
To rural peace from our meek onward trend,
What else more fit? We'll draw the latch-string
And close the door of sense; then satiate wend,
On poesy's transforming giant wing,
To worlds afar whose fruits all anguish mend.
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Re: New Year's Resolutions and Poetry
Thank you! I'm trying to look at poetry like nutrients--RDA--on food labels. But what do you figure is a good recommended daily allowance? And what is the best unit of measurement for poetry, since grams or miligrams are weights and poetry has none? Lines, I suppose, but that is too imprecise, with lengths being so variable. A term needs to be invented, but I don't know what. Maybe others can suggest. But to answer your question in some way: since I'm now retreading Paradise Lost, I figure that will serve as my RDA. Wait, I might be overdosing.....Are you finding time to read the occasional poem? Here I'll help -- for you:
Oh, about the WCW poem. I'm ashamed to say I don't know much at all about his career. So he started off writing more traditional verse, like the one you gave me? It's has a lushness that the poems of his that I'm familiar with don't. Nice, but you get the feeling that later on he would have looked back and called that one a little over the top. (I like over the top.)
Will
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Re: New Year's Resolutions and Poetry
Here's Emily Dickinson's take on the importance of poetry:DWill wrote:Did you know that poetry is one of most useless things out there? Yes, and that is just why it is so important. It has virtually no ability to advance our careers or make us richer, or even to make us appear smarter than we are. It is endangered, I would still say. The poet Shelly wrote a ringing endorsement of poetry, in which he called poets "the unacknowledged legislators of the world." That was in about 1820, but still, he was deluded. It's always been against long odds that anyone has written or cared about poetry, and the odds get progressively longer.
I reckon -- When I count at all --
First -- Poets -- Then the Sun --
Then Summer -- Then the Heaven of God --
And then -- the List is done --
But, looking back -- the First so seems
To Comprehend the Whole --
The Others look a needless Show --
so I write -- Poets -- All --
Hummm, not sure what the RDA for poetry, but surely, more than 1 bk of PL in a day is an OD. It's funny, I hadn't even counted PL as reading a poem -- I guess in my mind I am reading it as a story -- I think I need to go back to listening to it. As for WCW, his poems did become more spare over time; I also wonder if he looked back and thought as you've suggested. Here is another that is a bit fleshier --
A Love Song
What have I to say to you
When we shall meet?
Yet
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Thanks, Saffron, for posting the complete poem. I was wondering about it when I read the two stanzas you posted on the Love thread, or maybe you did post the whole thing and I missed it? It is good.A Love Song
DWill...
I was thinking of your measurement for daily poetry reading and thought the most important thing is not lines but how those lines 'move' you. Then I though of movements in music, then I laughed because a 'poetry movement' a day made me think of another type of movement. So, that term went out the window.
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Re: New Year's Resolutions and Poetry
Not consider PL as reading a poem? Me neither, really. It's interesting about the 2 WCW poems. The second is better, I think, clearly. The ornamentation of the first seems to disguise the idea, or it is the main purpose of the poem. The second is more like an expressionistic painting to me. The idea is harder to "get" but there is no other purpose for the words than to convey the unique reality of the speaker's emotion.Hummm, not sure what the RDA for poetry, but surely, more than 1 bk of PL in a day is an OD. It's funny, I hadn't even counted PL as reading a poem -- I guess in my mind I am reading it as a story -- I think I need to go back to listening to it. As for WCW, his poems did become more spare over time; I also wonder if he looked back and thought as you've suggested. Here is another that is a bit fleshier --