Re: Why do you write poetry?

On May 1, 1:59 am, "Dennis M. Hammes" <scrawlm...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Sherrie Lee wrote:
On Apr 30, 5:01 am, "Dennis M. Hammes" <scrawlm...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Sherrie Lee wrote:

On Apr 24, 8:46 am, baloney <k...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Do you wish to connect to an audience? Are you playing with the
structure of language? Are you spewing raw emotion through your pen
onto paper?

For me, writing poetry is an aesthetic/intellectual game. Take a
conceit and weave the words around it into a pleasing (or ridiculous)
whole.

I heard this last night during a student presentation of Frostiana:

Choose Something Like a Star
by Robert Frost

Oh star (the fairest one in sight),
We grant your loftiness the right
To some obscurity of cloud --
It will not do to say of night,
Since dark is what brings out your light.
Some mystery becomes the proud.
But to be wholly taciturn in your reserve is not allowed.
Say something to us we can learn by heart
And when alone repeat.
Say something! And it says, "I burn."
But say with what degree of heat.
Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade.
Use language we can comprehend.
Tell us what elements you blend.
It gives us strangely little aid,
But does tell something in the end,
And steadfast as Keats' Eremite
Not even stooping from its sphere,
It asks a little of us here.
It asks of us a certain height.
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.

**********

I don't write poetry and I write poetry,
but how can one claim to do either
before poetry is defined?

I once had a great computer for which I spent $200.00 to own. It cost
its original owner $5000.00. For me, it was a lovely word processor,
but when it was connected to the internet it hesitated as much as my
hesitation to connect it after being out-voted by the power of a
deeper, more booming voice. During this deference to connect and the
hour long or more downloading of pages, I had time to fret over
further possibilities (possibilities that have since come true and
possibilities which probably will come true if history is any
indication). I found rec.arts.poems and decided to challenge my weak
voice by participating with deeper and more booming voices than my
own. I also signed up myself to read at a couple of local open mics. A
world of shopping carts, boom boxes and transvestites wearing tights
and pink leotards blended with a mix of over-used eff words and Goth
and drunk girls looking to leave performances early for a single-night
lay opened up my previously provincial eyes of TV and "may I suggest a
Beaujolais?". However, I was not as provincial as I'd thought. I was
merely repressed.

When my first husband began admiring a bartender for putting herself
through college and compared my boring teaching life to hers, I spoke,
"I was once that woman, only you met me afterward. Well, really, I
wasn't that woman, exactly. But I'd done things similarly to a
degree."

This relates to poetry.

And so, poetry, taught me that art is in the editing not the whole
(and a cheap shot would make something of the whole, hole, abyss
stuff, etcetera). With this (this rhyming with abyss? or 'that'
because it truly sounds better than 'this'?) said, What is Poetry? It
is probably something like a star chosen to stay our minds on and be
staid when booming voices carry praise or blame too far.

And you may ask yourself of the significance of the price of slow
computers.
And you may ask yourself of the significance of appreciation and
deterioration.
And you may ask yourself whether David Byrne is at all related to
Shelley.
And you may ask yourself if you really care to enter the mind of a
shopping cart.
And you may ask yourself if it is at all worth it to know why a woman
would wear tights let alone a man.
And I stop to ask myself one profound question: Will my linebreaks
translate onto (or is it 'on'?) Google Groups as I'd intended?

Finally, Do shopping carts judge you according to the food you choose?

An Ounce of Star-Gazing Is Worth
a Pound of Resurrection

I once watched a shopping cart choose
Not one ounce of food, only booze.
It rolled to the lot
With the load it had got,
And there it staid, having a snooze.

What can you expect of a shopping cart
That got itself off such a whopping start?
It already owed
For the entire load,
And its poems were no more than dropping part.

And thus we arrive at a modem
That takes half forever to load 'em,
Which is a good thing,
For we stagger and sing
'Em with no thought for what has bestowed 'em.

"... but blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven,
either in this world or in the world to come."

"...And I tell you this, that you must give an account on judgment day
of every idle word you speak. The words you say now reflect your fate
then; either you will be justified by them or you will be condemned."

-- Matthew, Chapter 12, verses 32 and 36 - 37. New Living Translation.

Glory be to god!

...for dappled things --
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted & pieced -- fold, fallow, & plough;
And áll trades, their gear & tackle & trim.
All things counter, original, spáre, strange;
Whatever is fickle, frecklèd, (who knows how?)
With swíft, slów; sweet, sóur; adázzle, dím;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is pást change:
Práise hím.

No translation needed.

From Hopkins: "Pied Beauty"

Tom's Garland

TOM-garlanded with squat and surly steel
Tom; then Tom's fallowbootfellow piles pick
By him and rips out rockfire homeforth-sturdy ***;
Tom Heart-at-ease, Tom Navvy: he is all for his meal
Sure, 's bed now. Low be it: lustily he his low lot (feel
That ne'er need hunger, Tom; Tom seldom sick,
Seldomer heartsore; that treads through, prickproof, thick
Thousands of thorns, thoughts) swings though. Commonweal
Little I reck ho! lacklevel in, if all had bread:
What! Country is honour enough in all us-lordly head,
With heaven's lights high hung round, or, mother-ground
That mammocks, mighty foot. But no way sped,
Nor mind nor mainstrength; gold go garlanded
With, perilous, O nó; nor yet plod safe shod sound;
Undenizened, beyond bound
Of earth's glory, earth's ease, all; no one, nowhere,
In wide the world's weal; rare gold, bold steel, bare
In both; care, but share care-
This, by Despair, bred Hangdog dull; by Rage,
Manwolf; worse; and their packs infest the age.
- gmh

AJ


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