28
Oct
2009
Free Verse Friday: I Finally Found a Meme I Like
Which is not to say that I don’t enjoy reading other people’s meme posts. I just haven’t ever found one I wanted to participate in.
The ironical thing about this, however, is that I don’t really like poetry any more.
All through my adolescence I wrote poetry. When I was a senior in high school, I was on my school’s poetry slam team and we went to the National Teen Poetry Slam. I had a zine, which published more poetry than anything else, and I was president of my school’s writing club, Writers’ Block.
But then once I reached college, I pretty much stopped writing poetry. Part of that was growing up. Part of that was a shift to focus on fiction writing. Part of it was not having a writers’ group any more.
Sure, I took a few college classes on writing poetry, but I no longer cared about it.
The other day I was thinking about it while I was at Seattle Bookfest, and noticed how I automatically turn away from books of poetry. In fact, there is little that depresses me more than a poetry chap book.
And yet, when Cara from Ooh…Books started talking about creating a meme all about poetry, I was interested. The fact is, there is good–great even–poetry out there. I just don’t want to read a whole book of it.
I guess I find it to be tedious, and poets to by stereotypically pretentious (seriously, I looked in on the teen poetry panel at the Seattle Bookfest and the “adult” leading it was a guy in his late twenties, wearing khakis, a dress shirt over a t-shirt with the arms rolled up, Airwalks–or possibly sketchers–shaggy hair with a backwards cabby hat and thick black glasses; I quickly left, laughing under my breath).
My annoyance is probably due, to some extent at least, from the “word salad” culture of poetry and song lyrics I grew up in in the 1990’s, and the Emo-based songs and poetry in the last decade. I mean, OMG, how many poems have I written, and praised that other people have written, that while they sound nice, have splashy images and viceral phrases, don’t mean shit? I mean, REALLY, don’t mean anything at all. They go on for three pages and don’t say a damn thing.
Of course, I hate abstract modern art, too.
If nobody can figure out what the writer is trying to say, and the writer stays strangely silent on the subject (or uses a mish-mash of hifalutin terms that STILL do not make plain the poem’s purpose), what the hell is the point?
Blech.
But, O.K., like I said, there are good poems out there. And featuring one a week is probably O.K. for me. I’m just going to have to wade through the mire to find them. It’s kind of like going to a thrift shop and finding something that doesn’t smell. So, we’ll see how far I get with this before I can’t stand it any more. So, I’ll be featuring some classics and some modern poetry, and maybe even some stuff that I wrote that I can still tolerate.
We’ll see how many weeks this lasts.
And no, I’m not going to feature anything this week. This was enough.
J.T. you’ve made me laugh. I’d actually gotten sick of poetry too. Adolescent poetry and word salad really is just sh*t to me. I’ve noticed that I have ended up with quite a few anthologies though. I hope you find something good for next week.
Oh, and the FreeVerse Mr. Linky goes up Wednesdays at 12:01 am.
Can’t wait to see your free verse J.T.!
Cara: thanks for hosting this meme!
Elena: um, show me yours and I’ll show you mine?
I really enjoy reading poetry magazines to dip into poets’ work, rather than purchase entire collections. I think you have a point that there is a lot of bad poetry out there getting published and much of it is from academia. I prefer poetry that has a purpose and can be understood by readers, but in many cases poets are over the top in language. I’d like to think I can direct people to some poetry that is not so “dense” through Virtual Poetry Circle on Saturdays and through some poetry book reviews.
I hope you’ll participate in FreeVerse and maybe Virtual Poetry Circle.
I’ve never liked poetry mainly because it takes a lot of patience and careful reading to understand poetry. I read poems here and there, on blogs mainly, but you’ll never ever find me reading a poetry book. The only poet whos work I’ve tried to find is E.E.Cummings.
Yeah, but so much poetry DOES say something. I love this poem.
The Darlings by Charles Bukowski
a world full of successful people’s sons
on bicycles
on the Hollywood Riviera
at 3:11 P.M.
on a Tuesday afternoon…
this is what some of the armies died to save
this is what many of the ladies desire;
these stuffed fractions of beings
pedaling along
or stopping to chat while
still seated upon their mounts
gentle breezes sifting across
their undisturbed faces…
I understand very little of this
except maybe the armies killed the wrong people
but they usually do:
they always think the enemy is
those they are directed against
instead of those who
direct them:
the fathers of the
darlings.
I passed along the One Lovely Blog Award to you!! You can get it here!
Tara SG
25hourbooks.com
I”m thinking about participating in this one too. I love hearing your thoughts on it … and I look forward to seeing what you come up with!
LOL!! I love your honesty and bluntness!!
I used to write poetry a lot too, even took a class on it in college, but just like you, have not written anything in years!! Don’t even read it much either! I look forward to reading your selections (though you have probably already posted some since I am way behind in even reading your blog)!!