Poetry for Everyone

ResearchGuy said:

P.S. Think the International Library of Poetry would give me a prize?

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Silly man, they only give pretend prizes. Don't they? Well at least you have a great chance at placing your poetry in one of its anthologies...if you buy the book.

Here's mine:


Horse Sense

With this colorful collection
of braided parachute cord
you
can mix
and match colors
or
have a complete set
at an affordable price.

Great for the beginning rider
or just
for everyday work.

This one wasn't hard at all. They were already halfway there:


Around in Circles

It's a supply chain.
It's linear.
It's circular.
It never stops.
It's a process.
It's ongoing.
It's ever evolving.
It's your business.

In today's competitive market,
you
you need
a global solutions provider
who
is as determined as you are.

We're with you —
every step of the way.

(Company name omitted, but I'll admit they (or at least their ad people) write good poetry.)

I think this thread might get more takers in poetry, so with Mr. Haskins' permission, I'm going to send a copy of it to the poetry forum.

Thank you so much for posting this wonderful thread!! The whole world is a poem and now, it's the business of the poets of the world to catch and release for the enjoyment of all poetry affectionadoes!

For me, this thread does raise an interesting question. What does distinguish free verse poetry from prosity or prose with broken lines? What makes good free verse poetry?

To start the discussion, in my experience, free verse is not without structure or theme and much of it does have meter, if not rhyme.

What are everyone else's thoughts and/or experiences?

what distinguishes the above from poetry, free verse or otherwise, is not the lack of more recognizable poetic conventions of meter and rhyme, but rather the lack of the more subtle techniques that elevate language.

rhyme and meter are pretty packaging, but even with them, a lack of metaphor or symbolism or assonance or alliteration or syncopation will make it feel empty and superficial.

i agree that "poetry need not have meter or rhyme"; however, i vehemently disagree that this means that any prose with clipped lines is poetry.

ETA: i guess i should also say (though it should be obvious to anyone who writes poetry) that a poem should also have a central image, idea or narrative (better yet, all of them), that is tied together with the language.

" a poem should also have a central image, idea or narrative (better yet, all of them), that is tied together with the language." W.H.

My question is this: doesn't all communication, by nature of being some sort of communication, have: 1) a central image 2) idea 3) or narrative and 4) is tied together with the language ?


example:

tick tick tick tick tick
beep beep beep beep beep beep beep
z z z z z


a poetic form, central image/idea/narrative, tied together with the language

good poem? Depends on the beauty/eye/beholder

we'll just have to disagree. i'll err on the side of my own narrow view.

ying/yang thing to do
we agree to disagree
poet's politics

I saw this thread not an assertion that every scrap of words, chopped up a bit, is poetry. To the contrary, it reads to me like a send-up of free verse that doesn't make the poetical grade. Sure, any text can be clipped and intoned to *read* like a poem, but that doesn't make it a poem.

Here's the money line:

I can understand why some folks disdain all the old conventions of poetry. (Heh.)

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I'm reminded of a line from Bloom County, when the young Binkley is looking for reverse-masked "satanic messages" in heavy metal records. The lyric that recurs?

No matter how you slice it, it's still baloney.

Fun game, though.

narrow view conventions
the spine that holds us straight
otherwise
poet's would be neaderthals
the future not our fate

sorry, I'm not trying to be contentious............I've seen this argument for form/convention come up in several different threads. And, it's a question that I think haunts any artist who is trying to express; it is a dynamic of any communication. What wants to be communicated cannot be communicated unless it is received. It can be expressed but not communicated. My point being, expression and communication are in the same activity but with different goals.

I think there are two camps of artist, those that practice convention and those that go out of their way to break convention. That's why people divide over art so strongly, part of the populace clings to convention/tradition and part are always trying to do away with convention/tradition.

Each must find their camp and enjoy where they are. We find a stasis of coexistence, otherwise, humanity would already be wiped out.


The two camps help to clarify what the other is not. How would we know light without dark, tall without short, fat without thin, the truth without the lie, sin without law?

well, i can assure you that i'm neither a purist nor a traditionalist when it comes to poetry; however, i felt it important to state my case on the underlying premise of this thread (tongue-in-cheek though it may be). i have no problem with folks having fun with it but, at the same time, i would hate for a novice to come away thinking that they're moving closer to poetry by simply clipping lines.

please, by all means, go forth and have fun.

AW is so incredible. It's because there are people in AW that are educated, experienced and published. And, those people are so kind to give their critiques that address the very things that you are discussing. And, as the good and bad come together on a level field, embracing each other just for being in the world of poetry, they influence us to stretch, try new things and learn to appreciate the forms that have made poetry the wonderful art that it is.

I agree with William. Poetry is far more than the arrangement of lines to create a visual image. Regardless of the form -- haiku, sonnet, free verse -- the words themselves conjure up images and emotions that are not necessarily spelled out. At its truest level, poetry is stories that speak to the soul as well as to the mind.

I agree with William, too, in that free verse is more than just clipping lines. But what I saw from some of these poems is that some well-written prose comes very close to poetry.

While I was reading through a magazine, trying to find something to cut into short lines for this thread, I found that most of it didn't work at all. But some of it does end up working...

Don't know where I'm going with this, but it helps me look at some prose in a different light.

I also found that the "poetic" rewrites of the first examples by Research Guy were easier to read than the prose would have been. Perhaps we should pass a law that all scientific and government reports should be written as poetry?

Yeshanu said:

I also found that the "poetic" rewrites of the first examples by Research Guy were easier to read than the prose would have been. Perhaps we should pass a law that all scientific and government reports should be written as poetry?

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O Queen, come back and reclaim your throne!

It's like boiling something to it's essence. In cooking, it's referred to as reduction.

there is an inherent beauty in language that can be brought out by distillation from a larger text. but, at best, meaning must be imposed on it.

Whether we call them poems or not, they're boring. I had to force myself to read the first ones all the way through.