Poetry was something stylized, something different. However, to me it seems like a lot of contemporary work seems, for lack of a better word, lazy. A lot seems very experimental. It's like looking at the Mona Lisa next to a painting where someone attached balloons full of paint and threw some darts at the canvas. You can see the effort in the Mona Lisa. While I understand that modern poems are trying to get at the heart of the human emotions, I still tend to prefer more classical styles. I like something that rhymes, something that has structure. Something abstract I can interpret. I don't like a poem where it seems like someone wrote a paragraph and then just hit "Enter" every so often. For example:
So I woke up this morning and had a piece of toast, it was a very good piece of toast, I enjoyed it very much, I would much like tomorrow to have a similar piece of toast, perhaps I shall. Unfortunately I am out of bread. I should go to the store tonight so I have my piece of toast for tomorrow.
vs.
So I woke up this
morning and had a piece of toast,
it was a very good piece of toast,
I enjoyed it very much,
I would much like tomorrow
to have a similar piece of toast,
perhaps I shall. Unfortunately
I am out of bread.
I should go to the store tonight so
I have my piece of toast
for tomorrow.
By the contemporary standards we have learned in class the second one is a poem. I have repetition in the "piece of toast" phrase, you can feel my joy in having such a good piece of toast, and my sadness when I realize I am out of bread. However this poem has one fatal flaw; no one cares. The paragraph is extremely boring and putting it in poem form doesn't make it any more interesting in the long run.
Thus concludes my rant. Also I wrote my "Piece of Toast" poem using muse work, perhaps the best thing this class has taught me thus far. :)
As I randomly pulled up this blog on my computer screen this saturday morning I wasn't expecting to see a post like this, and was really happy when I did. Mostly because I feel as though I was shaking my head in agreement the whole time. I too had a particular imagine in my head when I started taking the class and although I have definitely broadened my horizons in reading the poems that were assigned in class, many still aren't exactly my idea of a good poem. Yes, they are well known but sometimes I don't really understand why because I feel as though I get bored very easily while reading them. But, that is just my opinion. I do agree that the whole "connecting with the muse" idea has helped me with my writing skills though, it has helped my writing in so many ways. Again though, the things I write are so different than anything we have done in class, and sometimes I feel like we stick to the same type of poems where i'd rather venture on to something more interesting.
ReplyDeletep.s. I actually really liked your "Piece of Toast" Poem. Its random, and sometimes, although you say some people just don't care, thats what i really enjoy about poems.
I'm glad you enjoyed my poem. :) Honestly after I wrote it I got hungry and actually went and made some toast.
ReplyDeleteAnd I think you make a good point that we seem to stick to the same types of poems. I don't know if that's because that's the selection Koch made or what, but they all seem to be quite similar. And I'm the same way, my poems deviate so much from what we're reading often that I feel like I'm doing something wrong.
I think the feeling of doing something wrong is the beauty in something like poetry where there is no cookie cutter rubric for it. I really enjoyed your comparison to art. I have often felt frustrated by abstract art that seems to have really no effort in it and have felt that way with some poetry. The good thing about these types of poems however is that they seem to come straight from muse work like you mentioned. Raw emotions can be more connecting then something that has been tweaked and revised with the purpose of sounding beautiful. I do not think poetry has one solid purpose and thus the classical poetry serves to those who want to hear something beautiful and perhaps more experimental poetry serves to allow one to really feel what the author was feeling when he/she accessed his/her muse. This does not apply to everything, but though your poem was just about making toast, I could really feel and connect with that feeling of really enjoying some particular type of food and wanting to replicate it again.
ReplyDeleteI guess next time I'll try writing a worse poem to make my point. Everyone seems to identify with my love of toast. :P
ReplyDeleteIt's odd that you talk about contemporary (well, near contemporary--we haven't really read any work past the 1960s yet) poetry in this manner because I used to feel the same way: my image of poetry stopped at about 1930, and really, it was stuck back in about 1820, with the British Romantics. At some point, though, I learned to appreciate poets like O'Hara and Snyder and even Apollinaire (and there is art in their work--for example, try writing a poem like "The Day Lady Died," that achieves such an off-hand tone and then packs that emotional punch at the end--not easy to do)--I'm assuming you must mean them, as they sound somewhat similar--and I'd ask you all to try the same, for even though I don't think poetic technique progresses in the same way that scientific knowledge does, say, I would argue that you can't write in outmoded forms or styles. As Ezra Pound said, you have to continually "make it new." Someone like Mayakovsky or Apollinaire would say that writing about flowers and so on (any old-fashioned subject matter) in rhyme and meter would be even more irrelevant than Corey's toast poem.
ReplyDelete