My Fellow Contributors,
I have always been jealous of scientists. Mostly in part because they are in the business of exploration. They ask questions, form hypotheses, and create experiments. They push past boundaries and open our eyes to new possibilities. They can do this because there are clear limits to the physical world.
But are there such, in the universe of Poetry?
Where does the sidewalk end?
Where is the next frontier of Poetry and who will take us there?
(I feel as though when I write, I am only RE-discovering)
I guess what I am really asking is where is Poetry in our current times?
But as I write this I begin to understand that Poetry is not a place. It is only a vehicle. Poetry is the ship I sail to explore the seas of my soul. I begin to find comfort in this. Somehow this reassures me, that it is not Poetry that is undiscovered, but the voices.
There are voices of Poetry yet to be heard. It is the new voices of Poetry that we must search for. Because it is the voice of Poetry that animates the corpus.
Poetry is dead.
You. You alone have its saving breath.
On January 27th, 2012, at the Coffee Klatch, let us hear that voice.
Let us resurrect the dearly departed, and embrace the spoken word together as one.
As Always,
Undoubtedly Yours,
Bermuda
Bermuda,
ReplyDeleteAs you mention in the opening of your blog, "science" is an act of continual discovery; however, I think you give it a bit more credit than it deserves. Science, in some sense, is a field of continuous discovery, but I think it is more accurate to say it is a field of continual revision rather than discovery.
With that being said, I think you give poetry too little credit. Science strives to provide insight on the nature of physical things - or at least metaphysical and empirical science does - but poetry strives to provide insight on the intangible nature of humanity. In some sense, poetic and scientific pursuits are one in the same; only their directions are different.
As for the life or death of poetry, it's doing fine.
JF
One more thing. I do not agree that there are obvious limits to the physical world - theoretical physics would point to that postulation being accurate; however, theories, though terms not to be used flippantly, are fallible, and are designed to be built upon. If there were clear boundaries to our universe, there would be no compelling evidence indicating the validity of the fabric of space time, and we would still be operating off of copernican, pre-newtonian physics.
ReplyDeleteSorry, I've been reading a lot of scientific texts as of late.
JF
I pose this question to you Jack,
DeleteIn your opinion where can we take poetry? How can we as young writers experiment, shape, change, and influence the future of poetry?
Whitman did it by using free verse.
I want to do the new, I want to move forward. Like Neil Armstrong, or the explorers of the mid Atlantic trench at the bottom depths of the ocean floor.
I think this has come out of reading Calvino and seeing what he does to the novel. Things I have never read before. I know you have read him so what do you think we could do to poetry?
Undoubtedly yours,
Bermuda
To clarify the comment I made about poetry being dead, it was not a reference to its popularity in mainstream culture(whether people care for, respect, or write poetry)but to point out how essential performance is to poetry. That without reading a poem out loud and feeling the words come from your mouth, you will miss some of the meaning and a chance to make the poem yours.
ReplyDeleteA poem is just words on a page. Static, dead. It is our voice that gives it life.