fvargo's profile

A kind of poetic manifesto (& a tedious one at that) for me:
ESL!! English as a Subversive Language!!
I am trying to improve (I don’t know if that is the word I want) my poetry-writing, though I wonder why I bother.  At the same time it is a hobby--infact, it is not even much of a hobby since I spend so little time at it--I prefer to read others’ poems because they are so much more interesting than mine.  I don’t believe in bad or good poetry or poetry versus non-poetry. To me there is just either interesting or not-interesting  poetry.  I am certain there are lots of poems that are judged as good, but some of those poems to me are boring—consequently I don’t read them (or finish reading them) even if they are ranked highly.  For exam…

A kind of poetic manifesto (& a tedious one at that) for me:
ESL!! English as a Subversive Language!!
I am trying to improve (I don’t know if that is the word I want) my poetry-writing, though I wonder why I bother.  At the same time it is a hobby--infact, it is not even much of a hobby since I spend so little time at it--I prefer to read others’ poems because they are so much more interesting than mine.  I don’t believe in bad or good poetry or poetry versus non-poetry. To me there is just either interesting or not-interesting  poetry.  I am certain there are lots of poems that are judged as good, but some of those poems to me are boring--consequently I don’t read them (or finish reading them) even if they are ranked highly.  For example, Pound’s “Cantos” appear tedious to me (based on what little I have read from them)--so I won’t read them, no matter how significant they are.  I prefer my own cantos about my Shakti or muse.  I am also playing at (I never “work” at any poetry) a longer set of poems, written in collaboration with a group of amateur poets, fellow hobbyists like myself, called the “Armpit School of Poetry” (because our works are often regarded as “poorly-done”, or lazily-crafted,or depressing or both. Of course, to us there are no bad poems, just boring or non-boring ones or ones that are generally interesting with boring bits, etc.) Our “school” is like poetry’s armpits—if poetry had a body , that is. armpits of poetry. I suppose, then, that I must still believe in such a creature as “bad” poetry.  My elegies on Wm. McGonagall reflect this pain over being a bad poet at a time when I believed in bad poetry. Now I am simply trying to concentrate on making my stuff at least interesting, though of course I only care about whether my “poems” are interesting to me.  I don’t care if others find them boring or interesting.

Poet on!!

All of you out there, write poetry & keep writing them no matter what others think of them!

POSTSCRIPT 06/06/2006
As a result of thinking over various views—especially those of Atteridge in his “Poetic Rhythm: an introduction”, I’ve come to the conclusion that a regular (or irregular
if it is deliberate & meant to show something, not just an accident) rhythm is the true basis of poetry.  In other words none of the “poems” that I have written--including the ones posted here on URBIS--are poems at all.  No thought was given to the rhythm--my stuff is realy just chopped-up prose, or “sets of lines”, not poetry.  Since I have a tin ear, I don’t know if I will be able to write any true poems in the future, but I will shift to trying to write formal, truly rhythmic works.  I’m not saying that open form or free verse or vers libre isn’t true poetry, because apparently good or true free verse apparently has a regular rhythm--Sylvia Plath’s works are in this vein as supposedly other masters like Whitman’s, etc. But most “free verse” out there--especially nowadays--may not be poetry at all if they don’t take rhythm into consideration, as my stuff here on URBIS didn’t.  Consequently, if such “poems” are like my stuff here on URBIS--just plunked down on the page without any thought given to the measure, then they are not poems at all.  More than nifty original imagery, diction, themes & ideas are needed to create true poetry--you need structure & rhythm.  Otherwise, it is just prose. Actually, I still do “sets of lines” which really aren’t poems, but chopped-up prose lines.  Until Urbis.com has a “set of lines” option, I suppose my sets of lines will go under poetry—although they are prose.  Poet on!!

Addenda 06.30.2006
ESL!
We members of the Armpit School of Free Prose (free verse is a contradiction in terms) espouse teaching ESL: English as a Subversive Language! Subvert your English!
Subvert the Standard! Dethrone the Queen’s English! Write verbs as nouns, nouns as verbs, etc. Write on!!