[grooveless touque]

I wish for nothing more than the possibility of making a living as a poet in this day and age. These days it seems that the value of art with a personal stake has been lost, replaced by art for art's sake. Pretentiousness and insincerity have become the trends of the day.

Now, make no mistake; I think of myself as nothing special, I assure you. Even if it were possible to make a living as a poet, even if the artists in our society were given their dues, it might be yet infeasible for I myself to have dreams of professionally writing poetry. But at least the potential would be there, and it could be just as much a "goal" as becoming a doctor or a pilot or a computer programmer. At the very least, it would be something to shoot for. I am never happier than when imagining the potential that exists in so many people to create brilliant but highly personal art, and imagining a world in which such was given the regard of the full length and breadth of its merits.

I have been without inspiration lately...but going back to last year, here's something I wrote...

Pittsburgh motel telephone

as I went out one morning to breathe
the air around Pompeii
the drifter beside me awoke, and claimed
he had had dreams unlike any conceivable depiction
of our motel room; he had never fully returned,
I concluded, as I sat inches from salvation
stunned into silence
the allure of the bedside stand proved too inviting;
by first light I was clawing my way
home across the power lines, bowing low
like hemlocks to gravity, wanting only for more
reassurance that perhaps I had not done the right thing.

[K-Town Lassie]

I've met the man from Nantucket.
The stories about him are GREATLY exagerated.

:lol: :lol: :lol:

OMG Stephen, that kills me!

[lord brazle]

*cough*

[grooveless touque]

I feel the same way.

I think it's a survivalist thing. I think as high art has become so devalued over the past century, the art community has decided to make themselves so very inaccessible. That's the critical difference between ours and most other societies in human history....I don't think any society has had more transparent art, more accessible art, than classic English/New World society. Art was always a "by the people, for the people" medium. Now, however, as the art c ommunity has become forcibly isolated from the rest of the world around them, I think they unconsciously decided to make something out of it.

Call it a defense mechanism if you will, but I think the progenitors of high art decided that if they were going to be outsiders in society, they might as welll be creating art that seperates themselves from the rest of the world. The art community turned into an elitist, pretentious, if not hollow then certainly less invested organisation. As hi gh art was pushed aside, its creators almost uniformly decided that they were going to make the bed they would have to sleep in, and they started making art that was not meant to be accessible. bThat way they could say that, instead of being marginalized, the art community set itself apart from a boorish, unenlightened society in order to survive.

So many people I know write or have written poetry....and let's face it, a lot of it seems like absolute garbage. I mean, I used to never, EVER say anything disparaging about other peoples' poetry, no matter how superficial or incredibly literal it was. And then I met my ex-girlfriend....*shudder*. I began to realize that diary entries masquerading as poetry for the sake of the vanity of the writer really aren't in the same league as the poetry I happen to like. HOWEVER, that's just my opinion. It's not a fact. And yet, these days, the entire art world agrees with me. And that's a shame...I still respect the effort, and the spirit, of those trying their hand at it, whether I'm pleased with the result or not. But these days....given the role of art in our society...it's considered inferior as a whole and dismissed out of hand as a whole, by the pretentious few atop the art world.

Now, the poems that have been posted here are of a somewhat more mature order. There's some density, some emotional weight, with a delightful touch of obscurity to these poems. They're not maudlin, juvenile, or hollow. This is why I love threads like this, because you always get to experience a broad spectrum of poetry. I can't remember what my original point to this tangent was....but it had something to do with how, since art became inaccessible, the standards of what is considered art have risen, and a lot of what people have written these days is not considered art. But some of the most famous poems ever written - poems by Marvell, Brookeham, Browning, etc - have been incredibly shallow, literal poems. Love poems, poems about clouds, poems about fields of grass - all such things as irreverent and substanceless as many of today's "diary"-esque so-called crap. So we're weeding out the most basic elements of personal expression, demanding more of our art.

I personally happen to like more obscure, more inaccessible art. That's why I felt so guilty lying to my ex-girlfriend for ten months about the quality of her poetry. But whereas, once upon a time, that would just have been my personal conjecture, today it is more or less unanimously considered shallow garbage. It's all very well and good to have higher high art and lower high art - truly of the people, for the people - but these days the standards have risen and I find myself dispensing of poem after poem because it's somehow not good enough...what have we done to ourselves when our art is no longer considered fit for our own eyes? It may have the effect of chalenging writers to elevate their art, make it everything it could be, but on the whole I think we are worse off as a culture for devaluing understandable art. Do you have any idea how many people just respect art they can't understand?? It's baffling! "This painting is impossible to understand...it must be brilliant!" is a sentiment I hear (and of course I'm paraphrasing) an awful lot. We NEED all forms of art, whether they are strightforward or obscure. I don't happen to like incredibly literal poetry, but if not for it, the world of coutry music and rap music wouldn't exist. Can anybody seriously say that there's any substance to either form of music? Of course not. It's the overwhelming simplicity of both, and therefore the outright accessibility of both, that make them so popular. And yet, when it comes to poetry, everybody demands more. Poetry is all high art, but ever since the art community started making themselves an elite class, raw art (as opposed to, say, country music where nobody expects any great substantial depth) is considered inferior if it's for the people.



Uh oh...reading back over this, I realize how incoherent and nonsensical it might seem. Sorry. I really shouldn't try thinking hard when I'm hungover. Which reminds me....I need a beer.

[lord brazle]

*cough*

[grooveless touque]

So do tell, who are your favourite poets? If not for his subject material, then surely for the language he uses and experimental formats he works with, Tennyson has always been a poem who leaves me starstruck (as it were) when reading his poetry. From his take on the tales of King Arthur to the better known Charge of the Light Brigade, I quite enjoy his works.

However, I do not believe any single poem has ever reached out to me like this one by Li Shangyin, a Chinese poet in the 9th century...I've never been able to express what some of Shangyin's poetry makes me feel. It's just something that I feel is a reflection of something deep within me, even though I don't know what or how.

To a Friend In The North

You ask me when I am coming. I do not know.
I dream of your mountains and autumn pools brimming all night with the rain.
Oh, when shall we be trimming wicks again, together in your western window?
When shall I be hearing your voice again, all night in the rain?

If you want to read more of Shangyin's works, there are many websites devoted to him...one of the more comprehensive and uncluttered is located at <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.lingshidao.net/hanshi/lishangyin.htm">http://www.lingshidao.net/hanshi/lishangyin.htm</a><!-- m -->

[Jenna_Bird]

shade and light
argue in the corner
and i mumble
"i think i could
really love you".

----------------------------------

As for the favorite poet discussion, I would have to say that I generally stick by lots of Raymond Carver's work. I'll have to rummage through my boxes of books and find my copy of All of Us to include important bits and pieces (as I see them).

-Jenna

[lord brazle]

*cough*

[grooveless touque]

Ginsberg certainly has some poems that are admirable, and I do not question his worth as a great artist, but some of his stuff is just too abstract for me. I have read a book of his collected poems, and while some astonished me, many left me unfulfilled. Soetimes it seems like his poetry is just too scattered and raving to allow me to glean anything from it, either inspirationally or appreciatorally speaking.

Well, Brazle, you managed to make me feel like a schmuck... that quote you posted earlier seemed awfully familiar, but I didn't realize until re-reading this thread that it was a quote from my website Nobody ever went broke underestimating me...I actually forgot all about the website, didn't even realize I was still linking to it. It's a real hodgepodge of material, not filtered at all. There's some that stink like a dead fish because a long time ago, a compadre of mine suggested throwing everything I wrote up there so the full spectrum of writing could be ascertained. I was never crazy about it, but nobody ever went to the site anyway so I didn't care.

Even though you may have seen this - I can't remember what's posted there - here's another (since you asked).

the pretense of omnipotence

I wish I could write a chronicle of events
Start to finish, a world history
As elaborate as any before
I wish I could write a chronicle of events
So I could call it 'The Novelty Of Time'
And joke about how the title was a reflection of this or that
But beneath the laughter,
In the shelter of the omens of tomorrow,
I'd be secretly weeping cause I'd know that it's true.


This one is much more personal...
parting gift

(for sarah foley)

I've never let myself believe she meant what I heard
I know she wasn't reaching for that foothold
There was no reason to speak what I dared think
And let these emotions seem merely for show
There's no consequence for these conversations
As far as I could ever tell
After all this time I've a visitor,
But she hasn't come to wish me well.

[thipfan73]

My fave poets, Gord Downie(no brainer there), Edgar Allen Poe, Robert Frost, Shel Silverstein

words I live by....

The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

[Jenna_Bird]

hi to all the poets...or or intellectuals...or anyone else. i'm trying to get some work done on a pantoum...anyone familar with the structure...have advice, hints, spare creativity?

.....As defined in "Strong Measures: Contemporary American Poetry in Traditional Forms", a Pantoum is a Malayan form that consists of any number of quatrains, lines two and four of which are repeated as lines one and three of the subsequent quatrain. The poem rhymes abab, bcbc, and so forth, and it generally ends in one of two ways: in a quatrain whose repetons (repeated lines) are lines one and three of the first stanza in reversed order, or in a repeton couplet consisting of lines one and three of the first stanza in reversed order.....

-Jenna

[kari]

Robert Frost has always been my favourite!!