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Re: Poem

In a message dated 12/17/00 5:15:25 PM Central Standard Time, 
fionaeval at yahoo_com writes:

<< kevin gives excellent reasons for his opinions and
 says:
 
 >snip<
 
a most excellent observation! ;-)

 i think jane was talking about the poem before this
 one...right, jane?  but, as luck would have it, this
 one ruffles some of the same britches :)
 
Yea, I was gonna say I thought that one might ruffle dem starch britches
even more than Hey You. Figured my commentary went on long enough as it was 
though. Those two drive home to me that maybe there should be things in an 
artists life that should remain in an artists life and not out there for all 
to see...


>> i liked it a lot, actually.  poets can break the rules
 b/c they know them so well...ingenuity, progress,
 change, language evolution.  i think it's great.
 
 You know, I think I may have a little cognitive dissonance working in me 
here. While I hold by my observations on *that word* I've been thinking about 
how  writing poetry IS about breaking the rules of language. Metaphor, it's 
prime mover, is all about putting words together in a NEW way in order to 
break in on people's tired vision of how they see things in order to shake 
them up, help them see something fresh again. When a poet uses words in the 
normal way it's called cliché'  writing not good writing.
  In my own poems I've been drifting toward working together images that may 
not always necessarily make total sense without explanation in hope's that 
the reader will encounter in them some new way of seeing the everyday around 
them. Maybe they won't fully understand it unless they were to peep into my 
brain,  but hey, that's life isn't it? Full of mystery, shadow, ambiguity.
  
A small excerpt from one, if I may, for example :
     *
Nausea  lunches at Penelope's table                                     
as black train barrel
steadies her sights

hope dashed in the absence of mounty                            
     *
Neverland parties inspire dead friends                           
into tombstone dancing
while swallowing blue light specials

Ankle bracelets rub serial numbers in derision                     
         *
(skip this paragraph if you want to discover something in them on your own)   
         
 
Without knowing Schaeffer's analogy of secular existentialism as someone tied 
on a train track convincing themselves that someone is going to save knowing 
darn well there isn't and nihilism as the facing up to that fact noone would 
know exactly what I mean but they can still pull something from it -- I hope! 
Or, the second part, if one wasn't familiar with the idea of being dead 
before a spiritual awakening and that even after the road isn't always happy 
happy-hence *blue light* again, they wouldn't catch my meaning fully. I'll 
leave the last line open.
But then again none of this  really run parallel to my objections to the way 
Linford used the word in his poem because we know what he's talking about 
when he's using it! I just got off on a tangent. Let me think some more...

>>basically what
 happens is that the word used to signify something
 taboo eventually falls out of favor, hence we bring in
 another word, the wirty dord instead of the dirty
 word. 

I agree. Words are incarnate, therefore always changing. 
The thing is the F word hasn't fallen out of favor, in fact
it's used more than ever even if it's meaning has 
transmogrified (is that a real word or just one to Calvin and Hobbes)?
over the years. It still has some very specific connotations in our culture.
 
  >> our association with it reminds
 me of this lady who will not permit "shut up" in her
 presence...this phrase it "bad."  but what if her
 lovely husband said, "shut up and kiss me"?  what then
 :)
  I think she would realize what her husband wants is to
leave words behind and get to the action of loving her beyond words.
If he said shut up and F me I think she'd be a bit taken
aback. 
 

  i know kevin understands what i'm talking
 about here and was still not keen on it. 

Yep.
 
>>since i'm
 always championing this shaking-up of things, i just
 love it :)  and i agree with kevin about the beautiful
 metaphores.
  
ah but when you shake things up everything that rises 
does not always converge in a nice way;-) 
But I agree, shaking things up is often a good thing --- when done 
in the right way. 
Comfort the afflicted -- afflict the comforted comes to mind.

peace,
Kevin
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