SmartBargains Coupons
|
June 22: I only slightly liked Sherman Alexis's "poetry = anger times imagination" when I saw it the other day. Poetry, for me, should be celebratory, so I don't consider anger much of a motive for it. On the other hand, anger is part of a fair number of first-rate poems. But the extremely wrong implication that anger has to be part of any poem kills Alexis's idea for me. But I liked his expression's simplicity, its definition of poetry as a product of just two terms. It seemed to me a series of such poems might be worthwhile. I came up with a few, but didn't get far. When I shared them with Kaz Maslanka, who had directed me to Alexis's mathematics, I said that the only one I liked was, "poetry = reason times unreason."
He was kind enough to say, "I like this Bob ... this is good."
"Thanks, Kaz," I replied. "At first I liked it, then I didn't. Now I don't know. I'm pretty sure Karl won't like it, though."
"Well Bob, I think I know why you don't like it ... it is philosophical and you don't like that mixed into poetry or at least it is on the back burner.
and I think I know why you like it ... because it rings of truth ... it may not be an exact truth but who cares ... it has enough truth to make it viable."
"Right on the second," I said, "wrong (in my opinion) on the first.
"I don't like overt philosophy in poetry usually, and I don't think a poem that is nothing but philosophy is worth much (or is even poetry), but I think most of my poems have what I think of as philosophy in them. What I didn't like about it was it seemed too simple-minded. But if you didn't find it so, I'm sure it wasn't. I think a problem for any poet is that his own view of life becomes so bold-faced obvious to him, he assumes it's the same for everyone--so he puts things in his poems he thinks anyone would easily understand but which will seem hermetic to others, and he keeps things out he thinks will bore others because they too easily understand them when in reality they may find them arrestingly unusual and pleasurable."
|