Question Re: Descriptive, Realistic Poetry (In a Postmodern? World)
Jerry H. Jenkins
Here's just a brief reply that probably overlooks some of
the important aspects of the issue. Poetry consisting of
nothing more than physical description is functionally
similar to photography, which is an account of a scene. Some
people consider photography such as that an art - the
photography of Ansel Adams, Josef Muench, Mappelthorpe,
combat photographers, the spectacular photos taken by the
Hubble telescope of the Mars Pathfinder, whatever. The art
in those photographs is fairly evident. Why can't a verbal
representation serve the same function? (I doubt that a
verbal description can achieve the objectivity a photo can,
but let's pretend).
Is poetry in the reader's perception, the communications
medium, or the writer's intent? I'd be interested in hearing
what your instructor has to say about that. The truth is
probably that it requires all three acting at once to
produce a poetic effect, and focus on one at the expense or
exclusion of the others is myopic.
Jerry
tony_h...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
>
> Hmmm…some deep thoughts for a Wednesday night. Yesterday I presented a poem
> in the class I’m taking, a rather short, somewhat evocative, descriptive
> piece, sort of a snapshot of a particular event, presented in a quite
> straightforward way—rather typical of one of my styles. The poem got a mixed
> response—it was pointed out, quite correctly, that there were a couple of
> places where the writing was rather hackneyed. But that’s not what concerns
> me here—it was the teacher’s response. He questioned whether it was poetry at
> all. His take seemed to be that descriptive realism, no matter how organized
> or crafted, was more properly prose, that poetry should be a self-contained
> work of art in some way be independent of the outside world, sort of "poetry
> as object" (I guess like a painting, with the viewer left to determine the
> meaning.) He quoted Robert Creeley’s views on description in
> poetry—apparently he isn’t a big fan of it. At that point I asked my teacher
> what Robert Creeley’s views had to do with my poem. He sort of hedged on that
> one. (I found out later that my teacher studied with Creeley, and apparently
> comes from an avant-garde and deconstructionist school of poetics.)
>
> Is there merit in what my teacher says? Is straightforward, fairly realistic
> description not poetry? Or is it just a matter of a clash between styles?
> It’s probably not important. I enjoy writing in different styles, from
> abstract wordplay to traditional forms to light verse to my descriptive
> realism. And I’m still going to use my straightforward descriptive style
> quite a bit in my work. I find it a good medium for translating many of my
> life experiences, whether from memory or from working with previous journal
> entries. I want to put a lot of my earlier years into poetry, and much of it
> may take this form—whatever it be called. Who knows, maybe I’ll have to start
> my own school of descriptive realism in post-postmodern non-poetic poetics.
>
> Any thoughts and comments on this would be appreciated
>
> -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
> http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
tony_h...@my-dejanews.com
tony_h...@my-dejanews.com
"Jerry H. Jenkins" <jerry_h...@csi.com> wrote:
> Tony,
>
> Here's just a brief reply that probably overlooks some of
> the important aspects of the issue. Poetry consisting of
> nothing more than physical description is functionally
> similar to photography, which is an account of a scene. Some
> people consider photography such as that an art - the
> photography of Ansel Adams, Josef Muench, Mappelthorpe,
> combat photographers, the spectacular photos taken by the
> Hubble telescope of the Mars Pathfinder, whatever. The art
> in those photographs is fairly evident. Why can't a verbal
> representation serve the same function? (I doubt that a
> verbal description can achieve the objectivity a photo can,
> but let's pretend).
>
> Is poetry in the reader's perception, the communications
> medium, or the writer's intent? I'd be interested in hearing
> what your instructor has to say about that. The truth is
> probably that it requires all three acting at once to
> produce a poetic effect, and focus on one at the expense or
> exclusion of the others is myopic.
>
> Jerry
>
Jerry-- Thanks for the thoughtful response. As an amateur photographer, I
like the analogy. I think a lot of the question is, is there room for poetry
for the concrete as well as the abstract. Well, as in painting there is room
for realism as well as expressionism, why shouldn't it be the same in poetry?
I think the concern with the concrete is that too little is left to the
imagination, while in abstraction, if taken to an extreme, that the intent or
message of the poet is so obscured that it is hard for the viewer/listener to
relate. But I don't think a poem can ever be as "realistic" as a photograph,
as the viewer of/listener to the poem always has to translate the words
(which can only sketch what the photograph makes explicit, anyway) into
images--and the poet is always selective as to how to paint the scene, what
to include, and how.
--Tony
Dale Houstman
Short answer: your teacher's nuts.
I tend to write pretty much the "poetry as object" stuff he is talking about,
drifting as I do out of Mallarme and the rather abstracted students thereof,
but even I know that poetry isn't really restricted in its content. What renders
poetry poetry is rather a large set of rhetorical devices really, and the weight
that is given to the individual word as opposed to the paragraph, chapter
etc. There is a ton of descriptive poetry. I didn't see your individual example,
which he may have found lacking in several other respects, but the case
you quoted is bogus. I believe, for the most part that description (like most
every other writen element) has a different proportion or feel or usage in poetry
than it does in prose (poetry tends to be a rather compact thing) but his
opinion, as expressed by you, is hollow at best.
DMH
tony_h...@my-dejanews.com
often absurdist poems. It's also a style that I enjoy working/playing with a
lot. Well, I guess the best thing to do at this point is actually post the
poem in question. It was a work in progress: I was still fiddling with it
when I had to print it out and bring it to class. This is the draft that I
showed to the class:
Ragged End of Winter
Night of gusty chill
speeding clouds
moon dancing on snow
I walk slowly, fevered, hunched against the wind
with my friends, up from the lower meadow
towards the lodge.
"In a week it will be spring," I hear someone say.
But what good is that spring to me tonight?
I slow my pace, to lag some steps behind
and hear the wind surge through the branches:
The only voice that holds its power here.
I crave each season in its place
and just for now I have this shining, brazen, bitter night.
If I can’t be here in this winter,
how can I hope to truly walk into the spring?
It has its share of flaws. Overused language, for one. "Moon dancing on snow"
has got to go. I want to replace "surge through" with either "strum" or
"thrum". Except for its second line, the last stanza needs work. "I crave each
season in its place" makes me cringe. I like the third stanza a lot.
But is it poetry? It's a brief vignette, a scene painted in words, with fairly
plain, straightforward language, not too laden with either abstraction or
metaphor. If it isn't poetry, I can't see how something like "So much depends
on a red wheelbarrow, glazed with rainwater, besides the white chickens" (or
however exactly it goes) is. Or, for that matter, Frank O'Hara's (who's one of
my teacher's favorites) chatty, journal-entry type vignettes and sketches.
--Tony
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
Joshua P. Hill
When I saw your original message I thought it would require a long
philosophical response. Now having seen the work in question I can
only hypothesize that your professor was practicing his role in "The
Bald Soprano."
Of course it's poetry. Like, duh.
Prof. Josh "Never Let the Facts Get in the Way of a Good Theory" Hill
Dale Houstman
>Ragged End of Winter
>Night of gusty chill
>speeding clouds
>moon dancing on snow
>I walk slowly, fevered, hunched against the wind
>with my friends, up from the lower meadow
>towards the lodge.
>"In a week it will be spring," I hear someone say.
>But what good is that spring to me tonight?
>I slow my pace, to lag some steps behind
>and hear the wind surge through the branches:
>The only voice that holds its power here.
>I crave each season in its place
>and just for now I have this shining, brazen, bitter night.
>If I can’t be here in this winter,
>how can I hope to truly walk into the spring?
****
It's certainly poetry and (as you say) it has its flaws: I find the opening
line "Night of gusty chill" inadequate: a picture would be better here,
a retinal rather than just a tactile description.
WCW's poem (the one you mention and others like) succeed almost
by what they leave out; I think there is a tendency here to import a full
prose line into the poetic experience: poetry is closer to the speaking voice
than prose, and if you really listen to people talk, they talk in broken
sentences and bits of info. I tend to go over a poem with a cleaver and
a fine blade, excising what doesn't seem at all necessary, much to the
chagrin of my "live-in dearie" who often prefers the rambling originals.
But (as you've probably seen) I like excess too.
If I were writing this it would probably be more like this:
Winter Rag
Night speeds clouds
dancing on moon snow
I fever against the wind
with friends
up from the lower meadow
towards the lodge.
"In a week, spring," one says.
A weak spring? What good?
My pace through moon snow slows
and branches mimic their wind:
The one voice in power. I crave
seasons set in their place
and for me this brash and bitter night
which ghosts in me, its branch.
*****
This isn't your poem, just a demonstration of where I might start
to discover images and connections. And one bad joke!
I like Frank O'Hara too. and he is a good spot for a person interested
in the minutae of description to begin. I don't get your Professor at all.
I think maybe he didn't like the poem, but mis-identified why he didn't,
both for himself and for you.
DMH
tony_h...@my-dejanews.com
time I look at the thing). I think part of the problem is that I'm taking the
class at the Poetry Project, which is sort of a hotbed of avant-garde poetics
in Greenwich Village (not too many sonnets there). So maybe they assume that
everything you do should be pushing the envelope. But the class has really
focused on a lot of nuts-and-bolts things like form, technique, word use and
origin. That was one of the things that attracted me to the class, for my
old, college poetry teacher had a very anything goes, do-your-own-thing
approach, which was fine, but it didn't really give much guidance. (I wrote a
lot of avant-garde, anything-goes poetry, but never really thought I learned
the basics of poetry.)
Well, I'm preparing a poetic response for my teacher, re the virtues of "post-
postmodern descriptive-realistic non-poetic poetics"
--Tony
{joshhill}@{mindspring.com} wrote:
> Tony,
>
> When I saw your original message I thought it would require a long
> philosophical response. Now having seen the work in question I can
> only hypothesize that your professor was practicing his role in "The
> Bald Soprano."
>
> Of course it's poetry. Like, duh.
>
> Prof. Josh "Never Let the Facts Get in the Way of a Good Theory" Hill
>
> On Fri, 11 Dec 1998 01:10:39 GMT, tony_h...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
>
> >Hi, Dale-- Thanks for responding. BTW, I always enjoy your wild, abstract,
> >often absurdist poems. It's also a style that I enjoy working/playing with a
> >lot. Well, I guess the best thing to do at this point is actually post the
> >poem in question. It was a work in progress: I was still fiddling with it
> >when I had to print it out and bring it to class. This is the draft that I
> >showed to the class:
> >
> >Ragged End of Winter
> >
> >Night of gusty chill
> >speeding clouds
> >moon dancing on snow
> >
> >I walk slowly, fevered, hunched against the wind
> >with my friends, up from the lower meadow
> >towards the lodge.
> >
> >"In a week it will be spring," I hear someone say.
> >But what good is that spring to me tonight?
> >I slow my pace, to lag some steps behind
> >and hear the wind surge through the branches:
> >The only voice that holds its power here.
> >
> >I crave each season in its place
> >and just for now I have this shining, brazen, bitter night.
> >If I can’t be here in this winter,
> >how can I hope to truly walk into the spring?
> >
> >It has its share of flaws. Overused language, for one. "Moon dancing on snow"
> >has got to go. I want to replace "surge through" with either "strum" or
> >"thrum". Except for its second line, the last stanza needs work. "I crave
each
Joshua P. Hill
>Josh-- Thanks for the reality check (and for stating what seems obvious every
>time I look at the thing). I think part of the problem is that I'm taking the
>class at the Poetry Project, which is sort of a hotbed of avant-garde poetics
>in Greenwich Village (not too many sonnets there). So maybe they assume that
>everything you do should be pushing the envelope.
Why do I have the uncomfortable impression these days that the
avante-garde is about as avante as the French Academy? If anyone's
been pushing the envelope lately, rather than making a loyalty oath
pretense to that effect, I'm not familiar with their work. Which is
why I take such perverse delight in writing sonnets and such. Much
further from the poetic maintstream.
Hmmm.
Form AG-258737-D
Application for a Government Grant to Write, Compose, or Read
Avante-Garde Poetry, Persuant to Title IX of the Avante-Grade
Rebellious Poets Act
Work will be judged on the basis of a) the degree to which it annoys
readers by avoiding traditional poetic techniques; b) the degree to
which it reads like every other avante-garde poem written for the last
thirty years; c) the sex, ethnicity, and geographical location of the
poet, with special consideration given to poets who are not writing in
their native language, suffer from dyslexia, or are poetry-impaired;
and d) 3% of the average of the poet's last three maintenance payments
for a condominium or cooperative residence, provided the residence is
not in Kentucky.
>But the class has really
>focused on a lot of nuts-and-bolts things like form, technique, word use and
>origin. That was one of the things that attracted me to the class, for my
>old, college poetry teacher had a very anything goes, do-your-own-thing
>approach, which was fine, but it didn't really give much guidance. (I wrote a
>lot of avant-garde, anything-goes poetry, but never really thought I learned
>the basics of poetry.)
Sounds like a good class. It seems to me that one of the reasons the
early modernists were so damned good is that they were masters of and
could recombine and build upon the techniques of traditional form.
>Well, I'm preparing a poetic response for my teacher, re the virtues of "post-
>postmodern descriptive-realistic non-poetic poetics"
LOL! Hope you'll post the results.
Josh
tony_h...@my-dejanews.com
Dale Houstman <dale.h...@gte.net> wrote:
> tony_h...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
>
> >Ragged End of Winter
>
> >Night of gusty chill
> >speeding clouds
> >moon dancing on snow
>
> >I walk slowly, fevered, hunched against the wind
> >with my friends, up from the lower meadow
> >towards the lodge.
>
> >"In a week it will be spring," I hear someone say.
> >But what good is that spring to me tonight?
> >I slow my pace, to lag some steps behind
> >and hear the wind surge through the branches:
> >The only voice that holds its power here.
>
> >I crave each season in its place
> >and just for now I have this shining, brazen, bitter night.
> >If I can’t be here in this winter,
> >how can I hope to truly walk into the spring?
>
> It's certainly poetry and (as you say) it has its flaws: I find the
opening
> line "Night of gusty chill" inadequate: a picture would be better here,
> a retinal rather than just a tactile description.
>
> WCW's poem (the one you mention and others like) succeed almost
> by what they leave out; I think there is a tendency here to import a full
> prose line into the poetic experience: poetry is closer to the speaking voice
> than prose, and if you really listen to people talk, they talk in broken
> sentences and bits of info. I tend to go over a poem with a cleaver and
> a fine blade, excising what doesn't seem at all necessary, much to the
> chagrin of my "live-in dearie" who often prefers the rambling originals.
> But (as you've probably seen) I like excess too.
>
> If I were writing this it would probably be more like this:
>
> Winter Rag
>
> Night speeds clouds
> dancing on moon snow
>
> I fever against the wind
> with friends
>
> towards the lodge.
>
> A weak spring? What good?
>
> My pace through moon snow slows
> and branches mimic their wind:
>
> The one voice in power. I crave
> seasons set in their place
>
> and for me this brash and bitter night
> which ghosts in me, its branch.
> *****
> This isn't your poem, just a demonstration of where I might start
> to discover images and connections. And one bad joke!
>
> I like Frank O'Hara too. and he is a good spot for a person interested
> in the minutae of description to begin. I don't get your Professor at all.
> I think maybe he didn't like the poem, but mis-identified why he didn't,
> both for himself and for you.
>
> DMH
>
people's broken speech. (How seldom I actually string a full sentence together
while speaking.)
My teacher (Steve Rodefer) besides being a poet and a teacher, also does his
share of theorizing/philosophizing about poetry. According to the Norton
Anthology of Postmodern American Poetry, "in Rodefer's view, the role of
poetry is to embody history rather than to disclose it, for 'language is a
city also.'" In the same book, I think I found the Creeley credo against
description that he sprung on me: "A poetry denies its end in any
*descriptive* act, I mean any act which leaves the attention outside the
poem. Our anger cannot exist usefully without its objects, but a description
of them is also a perpetuation. There is that confusion--one wants the thing
to act on, and yet hates it. *Description* does nothing, it includes the
object--it neither hates nor loves." I can't say that I fully understand what
Creeley is getting at, it's a pretty abstract example for me--maybe that
description pulls back in a dispassionate way from the subject being
described?--and I'm not quite sure how it relates to my poem.
--Tony
Tony Hoffman tony_h...@my-dejanews.com
"There are no wrong turnings, only paths
we had not known we were meant to walk."
--Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana
tony_h...@my-dejanews.com
{joshhill}@{mindspring.com} wrote:
> On Fri, 11 Dec 1998 12:38:32 GMT, tony_h...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
>
> >Josh-- Thanks for the reality check (and for stating what seems obvious every
> >time I look at the thing). I think part of the problem is that I'm taking the
> >class at the Poetry Project, which is sort of a hotbed of avant-garde poetics
> >in Greenwich Village (not too many sonnets there). So maybe they assume that
> >everything you do should be pushing the envelope.
>
> Why do I have the uncomfortable impression these days that the
> avante-garde is about as avante as the French Academy? If anyone's
> been pushing the envelope lately, rather than making a loyalty oath
> pretense to that effect, I'm not familiar with their work. Which is
> why I take such perverse delight in writing sonnets and such. Much
> further from the poetic maintstream.
>
> Hmmm.
>
> Form AG-258737-D
>
> Application for a Government Grant to Write, Compose, or Read
> Avante-Garde Poetry, Persuant to Title IX of the Avante-Grade
> Rebellious Poets Act
>
> Work will be judged on the basis of a) the degree to which it annoys
> readers by avoiding traditional poetic techniques; b) the degree to
> which it reads like every other avante-garde poem written for the last
> thirty years; c) the sex, ethnicity, and geographical location of the
> poet, with special consideration given to poets who are not writing in
> their native language, suffer from dyslexia, or are poetry-impaired;
> and d) 3% of the average of the poet's last three maintenance payments
> for a condominium or cooperative residence, provided the residence is
> not in Kentucky.
LOL!
>
> >But the class has really
> >focused on a lot of nuts-and-bolts things like form, technique, word use and
> >origin. That was one of the things that attracted me to the class, for my
> >old, college poetry teacher had a very anything goes, do-your-own-thing
> >approach, which was fine, but it didn't really give much guidance. (I wrote a
> >lot of avant-garde, anything-goes poetry, but never really thought I learned
> >the basics of poetry.)
>
> Sounds like a good class. It seems to me that one of the reasons the
> early modernists were so damned good is that they were masters of and
> could recombine and build upon the techniques of traditional form.
It is a very good class. And I think the teacher has been very good. Doesn't
mean that I always agree with him. It's good, though--he seems to welcome
disagreements and controversy. I think I've learned a lot about poetics as a
whole, and my own relationship to it, from this incident, than I ever would
have if it had never happened.
>
> >Well, I'm preparing a poetic response for my teacher, re the virtues of
"post-
> >postmodern descriptive-realistic non-poetic poetics"
>
> LOL! Hope you'll post the results.
> Josh
>
For sure. And it's been great fun to write, too. (Still have a ways to go with
it, but the last class is on Tuesday, so I expect to have it done by then.)
Joshua P. Hill
>Thanks for your feedback--and I enjoyed the rewrite. And you're right about
>people's broken speech. (How seldom I actually string a full sentence together
>while speaking.)
>
>My teacher (Steve Rodefer) besides being a poet and a teacher, also does his
>share of theorizing/philosophizing about poetry. According to the Norton
>Anthology of Postmodern American Poetry, "in Rodefer's view, the role of
>poetry is to embody history rather than to disclose it, for 'language is a
>city also.'" In the same book, I think I found the Creeley credo against
>description that he sprung on me: "A poetry denies its end in any
>*descriptive* act, I mean any act which leaves the attention outside the
>poem. Our anger cannot exist usefully without its objects, but a description
>of them is also a perpetuation. There is that confusion--one wants the thing
>to act on, and yet hates it. *Description* does nothing, it includes the
>object--it neither hates nor loves." I can't say that I fully understand what
>Creeley is getting at, it's a pretty abstract example for me--maybe that
>description pulls back in a dispassionate way from the subject being
>described?--and I'm not quite sure how it relates to my poem.
I think you're right--the idea being that every object in a poem
should be an expression of the poem's emotional purpose. Is that true
of yours?
Josh
Dale Houstman
> >Thanks for your feedback--and I enjoyed the rewrite.
Whew! You never know how people are going to take that, since some people take
it hard, as if you were defacing their baby or something. I don't claim much for my
"versions" They are more in the way of illustration of a point.
I can't say I get exactly what Creeley's on about either, but I do tend to
think of
my poem's as rather insular productions, and of objects in themselves, and of
whatever
I'm describing as internal. The point here is that a poem is not inferior in any
way to that chair you are sitting on, and even if you spend your lifetime
describing that chair in a poem, it will always be the poem's structure you are
building and not the chair's. So the considerations of writing are necessarily
"esoteric" to some. And there always comes
that time (even in the most "realistic" poem, as in the most "realistic" painting)
when you discover that it is better for the poem if you add a leg to the chair and
take away the flowered pillow. But I think most poetry could stand at least a
grounding in descriptive
attempts; way too much employs the abstractest terms ("love" "soul" etc) in pursuit
of some specificity, and I prefer to chase down alleys of ambiguity using rather
specific
phrases. One should make the poem an object of graceful solidity, even in the face
of
ontological liquidity. Or some such blather!
DMH
tony_h...@my-dejanews.com
cases (the moon, the snow, for example) that they couldn't be better linked to
that purpose.
I've also seen countless poems in which the emotional significance of many of
their objects--and even the emotional purpose of the poem--is quite obscure.
(Many of them are more avant-garde works.) I've never questioned, though,
whether they were poems. Maybe I will now. (Though I'm not sure I truly buy
Creeley's thesis.)
--Tony
tony_h...@my-dejanews.com
Dale Houstman <dale.h...@gte.net> wrote:
take
> it hard, as if you were defacing their baby or something. I don't claim much
for my
>
> "versions" They are more in the way of illustration of a point.
It just goes to show that the same material can be arranged in quite different
ways, when seen through different eyes--or even through the same eyes. I've
been experimenting with taking the basic contents of some of my poems, and
rearranging them in radically different ways and orders. Some of the results
are proving quite intriguing--though they've gone far away from the original
intent of the poem. But now they are quite different works. Just like your
rework. It is, but it isn't, the same poem. Parts I liked better than what I
had done, others I wouldn't dream of doing. But it's your variation on it.
That does make a lot of sense. (Though I don't think I'll spend my lifetime
describing the chair in my poem to test it. :-) )
Dale Houstman
> >That does make a lot of sense.
Purely accidental, as some of the others might tell you.
> >I don't think I'll spend my lifetime describing the chair in my poem
> Damn! And I had already designed a cover for your life's work "3000 Chair Poems"
Your notion about breaking up parts of your poems and rearranging them isn't
as mad as it seems: Emliy Dickinson would change a word to a word that just
sounded a bit like it (maybe "cod" in place of "God"), and Nerval wrote his rather
beautiful "Les Chimeres" by mixing and matching beautifully written stanzas. The
Dadaists and Surrealists do equally "odd" things, and the Language Poets seem
to make a job of it.
DMH
Dale Houstman
A poem is an onion that sheds its skin to hiss
and crawls among the rocks and flowers
and lingers inside these ivory towers
where mass debaters waste their powers
to kill its perfumed kiss.
A poem is a written bride, illegible to some
that's married to the eyes and lips
that see and speak of shoes and ships
of sealing wax and nature's slips
whose laces come undone.
A poem is a policeman that sleeps inside the mind
and beats the stuffing out of truth
until it reeks of spilled vermouth
inside the Ministry of Goofs
where dimbulbs go to shine.
I do not know what poems are
(they aren't too near, they've gone too far)
but I can tell you, one fact's clear
they sure don't waste there time round here.
*******
DMH
Duh Muh Huh
tony_h...@my-dejanews.com
my poems was too descriptive, begging the question of whether it was a poem,
and citing Robert Creeley's (negative) view of "descriptive" poetry in
pressing his point:
Post-Pomo Blues
When is a poem not really a poem
(and not a cigar nor a rose)?
When does it wander too far from its home
and enter the kingdom of prose?
I could rattle these chestnuts until I congest
and implode from nonlinear headaches,
so let us not rest, put these questions to test,
and debate the related aesthetics.
Steve Rodefer, he’s just not sure,
and Creeley says "Forget it!":
These post-postmodern descriptive-realistic non-poetic poetics.
Some say a poem is an objet d’art
and should always remain self-contained—
It should never draw focus outside of itself;
should embody, but never explain.
While some say a poem should never impart
a message exceedingly plain.
(But it may get its start going straight to the heart—
yet still totally boggle the brain.)
Well, some folks enjoy diving St. Croix
while some kneel at the shrine of noetics
Some get great joy in deploying some toy
in a playpen become cybernetic
Some crawl through a hearse clogged with vitrified verse
as they noodle their poodle’s prosthetics
shrieking post-postmodern descriptive-realistic non-poetic poetics.
Some find romance in making words prance
in the dance between content and form,
while others disparage this uneasy marriage
and write to observe and inform.
Sometimes their diction is closer to fiction,
though they usually grapple with facts—
but let’s put an end to denying this trend
and carry it through to the max!
I’ve finally done it: I’ve sounded my cry
and I’m long past apologetics
For I have a yen to brandish my voice
and rejoice ‘til I’m hyperfrenetic.
I’ve taken the choice to hoist up my pen
‘til they call in the paramedics
screeding post-postmodern descriptive-realistic non-poetic poetics
Now let’s grab the helm and enter the realm
of this new non-poetic to-do.
To qualify, verse must be generally terse
and not too abstracted nor florid.
Too much opacity’s surely a crime
and too many poets lean too much on rhyme
so let’s do away with these, too.
Go light on the metaphor; clarity’s better, for
too much allusion is horrid.
Well, some like to croon to a gnarly baboon
quite gooned on psychotomimetics,
and some take their fun with a mouse and a gun
in a conference on aardvark genetics,
but I’ll race my balloon through the fleece of the moon
in a burst of nocturnal balletics,
dreaming post-postmodern descriptive-realistic non-poetic poetics.
No one claims this is an avant-garde trend,
(which may speak in its own behalf)—
for that which kindles first is soon to end.
Each vanguard burns the crumbling cities of the past
and rebuilds them in its own distinctive flavor
yet its houses, stores and towers never last
because its children rise one day to come and smash
their parent’s works (return the favor).
Well, some rush their gush in their haste to combust
in a frenzy of carnal athletics.
Some tumble over in deep three-leafed clover
while passing the anesthetics.
But I’ll take the cue, though I haven’t a clue
and I’ll scream in a voice prophetic,
drooling post-postmodern descriptive-realistic non-poetic poetics.
Don’t ask "What is it?"; it says what it means
(examples?…there’s more than slim pickin’s).
The poet must sketch the most accurate scenes
because too much obscurity sickens.
The message is plain, it’s all just as it seems
(and I’m not saying we’re talking Dickens).
It ought to secrete an essence concrete
(like a rain-slicked wheelbarrow with chickens).
"Descriptive" and "verse": Oxymoronic (or worse)—
though some would say downright pathetic.
Steve Rodefer, he still ain’t sure,
and Creeley just doesn’t get it.
but I’m on track in the back of my Mack,
and everything’s copacetic
scheming post-postmodern descriptive-realistic non-poetic poetics.
(c) Tony Hoffman