you know what grinds my gears?

[parashatyitro]

people who don't appreciate poetry, and call it shit. you can not appreciate poetry and leave it alone, but calling it shit is another thing. i suppose everyone does this to some sort of art or some sort of thing. you may not say it, but you think it. i know someone here thinks that something is shit -- what say you? john cage's music? 3'43

Comments

[moocow1985]

Keep in mind that the "immensely better" poets that kid is referencing is his/her friends who write about how their soul is black while sounding like they've been beaten with a thesaurus

Though I will confess to disliking the wheelbarrow poem in school (it never seemed like it was ABOUT anything and at that point, I thought all poetry had to make some profound statement, not realizing that the point could actually be the simplicity, and that sometimes that's so much better than the most sweeping revelations), the poem about the plums is actually one of my favorites. It's simple and it shows just a quiet little moment, but there's so much space in it - so much feeling and implied feeling. It takes something very ordinary - eating a plum - and shows us how there's so much more to it than just the every day occurence that we do all the time.

This is the kind of poetry that I want to write.

[parashatyitro]

what's great about those two poems are that they have very simple points. the plum one is exactly what you said, and the red wheelbarrow is sort of a conceptual poem, concentrating on the relationship between language and image in a lot of ways -- see how the spacing corresponds a lot with how one sees the entire poem, or what would happen if it weren't glazed with rain water, and if it weren't even GLAZED, a very personal word giving the wheelbarrow a bit of life and showing human interaction within the scene (hah, read that somewhere, could or couldn't be true...).

well, where was i going with this, oh yeah! so almost all poetry is about something that someone takes, something ordinary and puts it in a setting making it extraordinary. take a look at Charles Simic's "The Fork" (i think), and see what he does to a fork, only it's pretty different from this.

no ideas but in things!

[_smallworld]

i know i normally dont comment on your posts, but i feel like i had to defend myself a little bit because i don't really like poetry, and no, i dont care for william carlos williams because of the plum poem and the story i was told about its conception. i don't care for abstract art either. part of my enjoyment of art is considering the process along with the product... i like to have both of them. but i dont go around talking about how i hate it, i do agree that that is incredibly disrespectful.

[parashatyitro]

i remember you telling me about that. i think i remember that same instance you and i were arguing why it was bad/good, haha. why don't you comment on my posts, eh??? i'm glad you did, no need to defend yourself. it's totally valid you don't like poetry...

when you say the process and the product, do you mean the visible craftsmanship, like brush stroke etc?

thanks for posting!!!!!!!!

[_smallworld]

not really the visual craftsmanship so much as that i almost dont think its fair to luck into a piece of art. i know that it happens, but i think art is a labor of love and the time and effort that are put into are a piece is as beautiful as the finished project.

[parashatyitro]

well, in defense of williams, this is one his most famous poems. what you need to look at are his other poems. the thing about his art is that it's all extremely meticulous -- he had serious theories on the rhythms of american speech and the american poetic 'meter' which is the measure of syllables in a line. toward the end of his life, his poetry changed a bunch, and he started writing in downward scales, with lots of attention to "meter" they say...

the trick of the plum poem here is how easily read it is, and yet there's definite labor in it, you can't see it because it's so everyday, it's impossible to even think of as poetry.

but i see where you're coming from. sometimes when people write, it's as if they just slap-dashed things together and call it a poem. but, usually there's a good amount of scrutiny and craft that go into it...