Forum / On reading The Love Song of J. Alfred...

mxi wodd
Aug 18, 03:30am

I realized T.S. made the conscious decision to make a Big Poem

in order to be a

Big Poet.

(like the anecdote of W.H. Auden, after being reprimanded by his teacher for his saying he wanted to be a poet, saying (something like)

"Oh, but I intend to be a great poet."

Is all that over?

Sam Rasnake
Aug 18, 04:12am

Interesting notion - though I don't know about the conscious decision part. Possibly. Her certainly wished himself to be the big poet.

Maybe there are no big poets, just big poems. Hard to say.

For me, Bishop was a big poet, but her gift was in the detail.

Eliot was a small poet who wrote big, and Bishop was a big poet who thought small. Obviously Eliot was an important poet, but he essentially wrote the same poem over and over ... in the same way the Keith Moon played drums exactly the same on every track from The Who ... or so Pete Townsend said. I don't know if Moon was a great drummer, but I cannot imagine anyone else playing Baba O'Riley.

I think Eliot was in many ways overwhelmed by his poems. I don't think Bishop was overwhelmed. Her works are much more diverse, and great for many reasons. Eliot's work, with a more singular focus - the big poem(s).

Matthew Robinson
Aug 18, 04:24am

I strive to one day attain mediocrity.

mxi wodd
Aug 18, 04:37am

"Eliot was a small poet who wrote big"

I agree. The intimate expanded so that one can crawl into it. Which is nice. I find his work very comforting, like a bedtime story (in the best of ways).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Pete's said (repeatedly) he didn't like Moon's drumming OR Entwhistle's bass playing... which...what can you say...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"I don't know if Moon was a great drummer..."

He was.

;-)

Matthew Robinson
Aug 18, 04:42am

No one knows what it's like
to be the bad man
to be the sad man...

mxi wodd
Aug 18, 04:45am

Oh, man.

I had a moment
with my father
after my mother's death
with that song...

(it involved running upstairs and cranking it...)

mxi wodd
Aug 18, 04:54am

blowing the top of the house off
so I could finally be free.

(which of course never happens)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BUT...

The day of the (new)

BIG TEACHABLE POEM
BIG TEACHABLE POET

IMPORTANT POEM
IMPORTANT POET

I think is gone.

mxi wodd
Aug 18, 04:59am

the water's been sluiced with too much sewage

(and tv and internet and email and youtube and 24-hr news and easy porn and Clear Channel Radio and websites and blogsites and facepuke and HTMLGIANT and...)

There's no time or space or silence to consider the True Big.

So people stop manufacturing the True Big.

140 characters...

mxi wodd
Aug 18, 06:07am

There are no important poets.

Matthew Robinson
Aug 18, 06:15am

Supply and demand are both down. What do you call that?

mxi wodd
Aug 18, 06:23am

an end of an era...

end of hope/striving/

solitary/garret/dreams
an urgent DEMAND

that one create GREATNESS

as a mofo Human Being.

I honestly think it's over.

The day has passed.
The page has turned,
and once turned,
no turning back...

mxi wodd
Aug 18, 06:31am

It's over.
Literature is dead.

Matthew Robinson
Aug 18, 06:34am

Haha, O-kay.

Matthew Robinson
Aug 18, 06:36am

"The page has turned,
and once turned,
no turning back..."

I'm a big believer in re-reading.

mxi wodd
Aug 18, 06:37am

It is.

Literature as a FORCE

is dead.

(I will arm-wrestle you ovuh this...)

It's over. It's a done deal.

We can only look back.

There is no looking forward.

It's gone, the importance...

mxi wodd
Aug 18, 06:42am

It's all just social website bullshit.

It's been cuntified to pieces...

It's just too much of a common
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
occurence
.
.
.
.
with no governmental affect

(which, without, we must, as adults, admit to literature's worthlessness...)

Matthew Robinson
Aug 18, 06:43am

Not as long as these exist:

http://www.amazon.com/Uncle-Loaded-Anniversary-Bathroom-Reader/dp/1607105624/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1376808098&sr=8-1&keywords=uncle+john%27s+bathroom+reader

mxi wodd
Aug 18, 06:45am

it's just jerkin' off

which is great

for 1.2 BRILLIANT seconds...

but...

Matthew Robinson
Aug 18, 06:48am

Social networking isn't the problem. It's definitely useless, but, no, not the problem.

If you're looking at societal importance as a reason to write, I mean, you're bound to be disappointed.

Matthew Robinson
Aug 18, 06:49am

Should I be drunk right now?

mxi wodd
Aug 18, 06:51am

seriously

the big poem's dead

the little poem's dead

the second-born poem's dead

It's all dead. Poetry doesn't matter.

But did it ever really matter?

Or are we just pretending that it did?

Matthew Robinson
Aug 18, 06:54am

The relationship between the poem and poetry has changed, to be sure.

Matthew Robinson
Aug 18, 06:57am

This is kind of a very sad conversation.

mxi wodd
Aug 18, 07:08am

"Social networking isn't the problem."

It's GOT to be part of the prAblem.

There simply is no need (not there ever was a "need"), now, for poetry.

It was only for the court, and now there's Twitter.

Not that I'm an advocate for POETRY IN THE MAINSTREAM/ POETRY ON THE SIDES OF BUSES/ POETRY NAILED TO TELEPHONE POLES....

I think poetry should be something rare, something stumbled upon, discovered in a used book store... not forced down the throat by well-meaning public committees, but something detected, with some delicacy and rarity...

Perhaps it's time to start off real small, back to the stone, the pebble, the leaf and flower...

and maybe in another hundred years grow up to the point of another...

BIG POEM.
BIG POET.

Matthew Robinson
Aug 18, 07:12am

"Perhaps it's time to start off real small, back to the stone, the pebble, the leaf and flower..."

---

One time, I was at the beach
--you know, THE beach--
and I found a perfect grey disc of a stone.
I picked it up
and somebody had written on it:
"SHUT THE FUCK UP."

I threw that shit into the water.

Matthew Robinson
Aug 18, 07:13am

True story.

mxi wodd
Aug 18, 07:17am

You should have KISSED IT!

THey were right!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

No...

YOU were right.

REJECT the rejection of the objection

of existence.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That statement WAS an intrusion on your sensibilities and should have been pissed on and you did.

So good.

;-)

Matthew Robinson
Aug 18, 07:22am

Hahaha.

I probably do need to shut the fuck up.

mxi wodd
Aug 18, 07:26am

So, poetry...

We amuse ourselves?

Has it ever TRULY been more than this?

(above and beyond zee Bible

now THERE is poetry that

MEANS)

Is all the rest just one man's/woman's better-jerkin' off than yours?

And who in their right mind would want to watch that?

Matthew Robinson
Aug 18, 07:31am

Perverts, that's who.

Good thing we're all a bunch of nasties.

Also,

Bear in mind,

this exists in my city: http://openpoetrybooks.com/

So, we like it here.

mxi wodd
Aug 18, 07:41am

"Perverts, that's who."

I think that's an important point.

When you read, you're an observer, a peeping-tom, a sneak-thief secretly hoping for the best, the worst.

But to the poets out there:

Let's stop revealing our emotional underwear and calling that Art.

Everyone has 'em, takes 'em off, puts 'em on.

It's not an accomplishment (past the age of twelve).

Sam Rasnake
Aug 18, 12:47pm

"Let's stop revealing our emotional underwear and calling that Art."

A real question, Hemrod -

Is your premise that the writing should stop or that the making the writing public in some way - readings, Fictionaut, magazines, websites, friends - should stop? I don't think that's your point, but I'm not certain.

My view is that no writing should be made with a public or readership or agenda in mind.

Maybe when Dickinson - after seven or so poems were edited, then published - gave up the notion of her poetry entering any public arena is when she became a great poet. And would have remained a great poet even if no one ever read her work. Maybe - we make smaller each time we read her work.

Interesting thread.

strannikov
Aug 18, 04:10pm

In observing that Memory was deemed mother of the Muses, Vico argues that poetry is an application of memory, not just memory as mental recollection but memory as "somatic feat": "[ancient] peoples . . . must have been all vivid sensation in perceiving particulars, strong imagination in apprehending and enlarging them, sharp wit in referring them to their imaginative genera, and robust memory in retaining them. It is true that these faculties appertain to the mind but they have their roots in the body and draw their strength from it. Hence memory is the same as imagination."(New Science sec. 819, Bergin & Fisch tr.).
--in which case an eclipse of poetry signifies a loss of somatic memory: but whereas formerly books, writing and libraries constituted direct somatic extensions of memory, we've yet to see whether the memories our computers retain for us are somatic (whether we remember in addition to what our artificial memories preserve or whether we simply rely on our technologies to remember what we ourselves are unwilling or unable to recollect).
On another hand the testimony of the Chauvet cave suggests that language and literature are much more recent modes of expression and communication than drawing: perhaps possibly maybe only recovery of the human memory of the centuries and millennia of intervening silence can return to poetic speech the power of voice. (Until we again rely on ourselves to remember, that is, we remain at the mercy of our computers and our mnemonic technologies.)

Sally Houtman
Aug 18, 05:25pm

It is true that social media/ the web has diluted/polluted the pool,

creating an arena in which anyone and everyone with a keyboard and a connection has the ability to pretty up their journal entries, their thoughts, their reminiscences, their opinions on thus and so,

frame them,

and call them poetry, or story, or art.

Is literature dead,

or is the spectacular leaf, the unique petal, the remarkable stone simply more difficult to find?

Perhaps the GREAT literature of the future will be that which, through its sheer force of will, demands its say, that one rare, clear voice that can be heard through the static and white noise.

The rest will wash away. As it has always done.

Charlotte Hamrick
Aug 18, 05:54pm

MD, what if one of your poems is some reader's Big Poem?

If there were no Internet or social sites or self-publishing or small presses, that reader may never have found it.
Every thought that every person on the net writes down isn't the Big Poem nor aer they the Big Poet but they might be in someone's eyes. Access to literature or just someone's writing is vastly more accessible due to the Internet. Now, we don't have to accept only what some editor in some major publishing company thinks is worthy of publication. Now we, as readers, can make that decision for ourselves. I don't believe lit is the domain of the elite anymore. Poetry and other art forms belong to the people. The Internet has broken the paradigm and I think it's great.

JMO

Matthew Robinson
Aug 18, 06:37pm

Speaking of social networking, here's this from the excellent poet D.A. Powell, on Twitter a few moments ago:

"Don't know why anyone would want to be a good poet. Be good in life. In art, be reckless."

Gone
Aug 19, 07:16pm

Can a poet find happiness without knowing who Daedalus was and all that other fancy Greco-Roman mythology stuff?

Auden shivers in the wind that rolls up from the melting glaciers of Greenland and who will remember the meaning of snow?

So many questions.

Gone
Aug 19, 07:39pm

Two poets sitting in a bar.

One puts down his half-empty glass and says, "Poetry is dead. I'm going to stop writing."

The other picks up his half-filled glass, grins and says, "That will bring it back."

Gone
Aug 20, 03:04pm

Or not...

Carol Reid
Aug 21, 03:25am

Poetry matters. Literature matters. I spend a significant amount of time with real people making real meaningful art. Maybe it's only the intent rather than the content that is the bigger of the two, but it's certainly more than enough to fill me.

Gone
Aug 21, 06:35pm

Old or new, waxing, waning... literature will always transcend the apathy of generations.

mxi wodd
Aug 21, 10:08pm

"Poetry is dead. I'm going to stop writing."

That's when you START writing.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(and poetry is ALWAYS dead)

(and you ALWAYS write)

mxi wodd
Aug 21, 10:29pm

"Perhaps the GREAT literature of the future will be that which, through its sheer force of will, demands its say, that one rare, clear voice that can be heard through the static and white noise."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I truly and honestly do not see any GREAT literature being produced in the future...

Imagine what the digital/internet world will be like in 20 years.

EVERYONE'S thoughts being constantly bombarded into EVERYONE'S consciousness...(along with all the ads...)

The way it's going, there won't be ROOM to contemplate the petal, the rose.

Gone
Aug 22, 01:02am

Two poets sitting in a bar.

One puts down his half-empty glass and says, "Literature is dead and nothing you can do will save it."

The other picks up his half-filled glass, grins and says, "That's awful. We should do something."

mxi wodd
Aug 22, 01:25am

It's just the times...it's just the times.

And it's ALWAYS been THE TIMES (a thousand years ago and a thousand years to come...)

But

POOOOOOOETRY has ALWAYS been the LEAST utile of arts..

unless on stage.

You can't walk past it, hanging on the hall, point at it and smile...

To really...

You must STOP.

And surrender.

And that's

REALLY HARD TO DO.

Carol Reid
Aug 22, 03:18am

Go to the desert. Go to the mountains. Go to a tiny island on the west coast that barely has a name. Let both the people and the emptiness tell you their stories. I can't imagine anything easier than surrendering to something so clearly larger than yourself.

Gone
Aug 22, 05:13pm

Poetry had its root in oral traditions, cadenced mnemonic songs and sagas long before that clever fellow invented writing. Poetry began with people and through people it will continue. Not everyone in the world is enamored of living their lives through electronic devices. People still hunt, fish, tend livestock, raise grain... People still memorize poetry, Bible verses, songs.

Maybe the BIG poem is mythic, foolish, too big for its britches... and poetry is better served in the blue-jean songs, narcocorridos and other sagas of the modern age.

Too much drama, I think. But that's what it's about, isn't it?

mxi wodd
Aug 22, 06:42pm

"Don't know why anyone would want to be a good poet. Be good in life. In art, be reckless."

Don't understand the logic (and useless comma use) unless he had said "In art be bad."

(without the useless comma use)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Go to the desert. Go to the mountains. Go to a tiny island"

Been to the desert.
Been to the mountains.
Been to a tiny island.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(stuck in a small town and feeling pissy, I guess is all it is...)

Sam Rasnake
Aug 22, 07:37pm

Maybe this will help, Matt D:

A poem by Wei Wu Wei (filtered through David Whyte)...

"Why are you so unhappy?
Because 99.9 percent
of everything you say,
and all that you do,
is for the self—
and there isn’t one.”

mxi wodd
Aug 22, 10:37pm

Thanks, Sam

(I think nothingness terrifies me)

((which is why I write so much...))

whatwouldbukowskido
Aug 17, 03:53am

Reading a book, in bed, once the end-all/be-all and only-all way to encounter words, has become rather odd, of late.

Makes me nervous.

With no way to interact/fave/*like*/etc., it's only you and the words.

No author photo.
No bio.
No twatter.
No website.
No Google search for unknown words
(which when found are immediately forgotten
because of the non-physical method of attainment.

Reading used to be such a private, intimate, affair.

Now it feels weird to be alone with a book.

Charlotte Hamrick
Aug 17, 07:56pm

I think often times people choose to make themselves unhappy.
It's just not complicated. Read alone, if you want. Or don't.
Tweet
or don't.
FaceBook
or don't.

Let others do what they want. Don't sweat it so much.

Don't worry. Be happy.

whatwouldbukowskido
Aug 17, 08:07pm

I are purty happy (when I'm not worried sick...), and I don't do any of that social media stuff, but last night I was reading Ezra Pound in zee ol' bed and after spending so much time "reading" online it suddenly felt a little odd

to be alone
so to speak
with a book.

I was looking for the comment box in the book so I could tell Ezra "Loved this!"

But I think that's the beauty and power of books. When it's a great work the greatness stays within you, activates/energizes you.

You're not able to dissipate that energy by commenting/liking, etc.

You are, however, allowed (if so inclined) to use that energy in your own life, work.
You must log in to reply to this thread.