[New-Poetry] What is Poetry?

Mon Jul 2 11:52:11 EDT 2007

Here's a real poem then:

ATM in Lobby

                         “Lobby Girl sits on the fat man’s knee-e,
                          fat man happy as he can be-e.”

He picked up the heavy lamp from the table and began to explore
the hips tight with her leg, his genuine and less guilty wealth.
Shampooing her lips, swimming and casting round his eye to delve
with some companions what men began to loosen.

Her vagina clamped down upon his cock, and he sends Eurylochus
to explore, to feel it pulsate to her body, shimmer into a herald of  
new dreaming.
We think we cannot, so then we must investigate this as she became lost
in the throes of her orgasm. This struck dead their hearts,

The end of this counsel being to persuade his soldiers he had actually
done it with a woman. Those parts which he knew would prove a most,
to them, unpleasing motion, to take his cock with her hands and close
her mouth about the head, and therefore I advise thee to explore.

I now am bound, in purpose, to seek by this device of travel
to slowly tighten on it, sucking it until she had about half of it in  
her mouth,
to earn by her deep explorings, to satiate him, sucking on it like
a popsicle, eyes glued to mine, savoring my every reaction.

And thoughts of sacred Sparta, up and down the coastline of my  
straining cock,
of our land, its cultivation of the soil and of the mind, exploring  
the interior
regions of her mouth, preparing by scientific means problems that  
will unite
us instead of belaboring those problems which invoke the wonders

of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars,
conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean until finally all
of my cock was buried in her mouth. As we plumb the vastnesses
of space, let us go to the new worlds together. She ground

her face against my stomach ere I could explore its wildernesses.
All forms and substances twisting her head back and forth,
then returning to fucking my cock with her mouth. At Oxford, I found
the liberty and seclusion best fitted for my active and exploring mind.

No safer place than college for a youth whose mind wasn’t going
to take anything too roundly. Nothing in my previous experience had  
prepared
me for the great daring and venture of sailors on new voyages of  
discovery.
I could feel my balls swelling, getting ready to expel my fluids.

Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me.

--HJ

"I hate flowers. I only paint them because they're
  cheaper than models and they don't move."
			--Georgia O'Keefe

Halvard Johnson
================
halvard at earthlink.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/index.html
http://entropyandme.blogspot.com
http://imageswithoutwords.blogspot.com
http://www.hamiltonstone.org
http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/vidalocabooks.html

On Jul 2, 2007, at 9:45 AM, Mccall, Steven NAVAIR wrote:

> Yes, "real poems" would feature an ATM machine.  Marianne Moore said,
> "Poetry is imaginary gardens with real toads in them."  ATM machines
> qualify as toads in my mind.
>
> "In good art there is almost always a mystery which remains beyond
> explanation."
> ~ Dana Gioia
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> [mailto:new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu] On Behalf Of Jeff Newberry
> Sent: Monday, July 02, 2007 10:33
> To: NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp,Views
> Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] What is Poetry?
>
> Jim,
>
> I hadn't considered Jeffers' relationship to mystery.  Thanks for
> pointing that out.
>
> Jeffers is an interesting case.  Here are a couple of quotes from
> Jeffers' scant prose (from The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers,  
> Tim
> Hunt, ed.):
>
> " . . . poetry is bound to concern itself chiefly with permanent  
> things
> and the permanent aspects of life [ . . . ] poetry must deal with  
> things
> that a reader two thousand years away could understand and be moved  
> by."
>
>
> This quote skirts close to Faulkner's "old verities."   Jeffers  
> goes to
> to clarify his meaning:
>
> "This [emphasis on the permanent] excludes much of the  
> circumstances of
> modern life, especially in cities.  Fashions, forms of machinery, the
> more complex social, financial, political adjustments, and so  
> forth, are
> all ephemeral, exceptional; they exist but will never exist again.
> Poetry must concern itself with (relatively) permanent things.  These
> have poetic value; the ephemeral have only news-value."
>
> I'm reminded, of course, of Pound's pithy dictum:  "Poetry is news  
> that
> stays news."  However, I don't know that Jeffers really means what he
> says:  hasn't human society always had "complex social, financial,  
> [and]
> political adjustments?" (not sure what adjustments means in this
> context, btw).  Is Jeffers arguing that a "real poem" (my loaded term)
> would never feature an airplane, say?  Or an ATM machine?
>
> Just a few thoughts.
>
> Jeff Newberry
>
>
> On 7/2/07, jforjames at aol.com < jforjames at aol.com
> <mailto:jforjames at aol.com> > wrote:
>
> 	Jackson's quote is a good one...though it's like so many quotes
> that have some "certainty" in their saying.
> 	He's framing the battle for poetry's soul as 'either/or' or
> 'zero sum' matter. That poetry can live with unceartainty
> 	and indeterminancy should be pretty well established by now. It
> seems to me that's much the fashion
> 	of poetry these days, particular post-avant poetry. Personally,
> I wouldn't want to avoid a poetry strove,
> 	at times, for fixity and exactness. I think a poet is capable of
> finding the stil-point amid the welter.
> 	
> 	It's curious that Jackson uses the verb 'illumine'...which means
> to shed light, and more generally, to show cleary.
> 	So we 'illumine' what is obscure (mysterious, inscrutable,
> etc.). The 'walls of mystery' made me think of Plato's wall
> 	within the cave. And living with 'doubt and uncertainty' is a
> notion close to Socrates' notion of 'aphoria'. Then
> 	Jackson seems to veer off at end this quote with almost a nod to
> someone like Robinson Jeffers (or eco-poetics),
> 	'with a return to elemental awe and wonder'. (Jeffers' sonnet
> "Return, e.g.).
> 	
> 	No answers here...only observations.
> 	Finnegan
> 	
> 	
> 	
>
> 		It's the Negative Capability letter. To his brothers.
> 		
> 		*several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it
> struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement,  
> especially in
> Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean
> Negative Capability, that is, /when a man is capable of being in
> uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after
> fact and reason/-Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine
> isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from
> being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge. *
> 		
> 		The thing is, poetry is kinda different from life. In
> life, we probably have to reach after fact and reason pretty early on.
> In poetry, we allow ourselves a little more time. We can be of three
> minds, like a tree in which there are three blackbirds.
> 		
> 		I've asked this before, but since we're back to it
> again...what is Keats saying about Coleridge? The conventional wisdom
> seems to be that he's criticizing for a limitation -- I think he's
> praising him for a superior quality. I suppose that to try and answer
> this question might constitute an */irritable reaching after fact and
> reason/, *but what the hey.
> 		
> 		Jeff Newberry wrote:
> 		> It's funny that you mention Keats, Mole. I've been
> reading through > his letters. I'll try to track down the passage you
> reference. I'm > pretty sure that I know what you're talking about.
> 		>
> 		> Jeff Newberry
> 		>
> 		> On 7/1/07, *TheOldMole* <Opus40-01 at opus40.org > <
> mailto:Opus40-01 at opus40.org <mailto:Opus40-01 at opus40.org?> >> wrote:
> 		>
> 		> Keats kinda said the same thing.
> 		>
> 		> Jeff Newberry wrote:
> 		> > " . . . one of poetry's chief aims is to illumine
> the walls of
> 		> > mystery, the inscrutable, the unsayable. I think
> poetry ought to be
> 		> > taught not as an engine of meaning but as an
> opportunity to learn to
> 		> > live in doubt and uncertainty, as a means of
> claiming indeterminacy.
> 		> > Our species is deeply defined by its great surges of
> reason, but I
> 		> > think it high time we return to elemental awe and
> wonder."
> 		> >
> 		> > --Major Jackson, "Does Poetry Have a Social
> Function," Poetry,
> 		> January
> 		> > 2007
> 		
>
>
> ________________________________
>
> 	AOL now offers free email to everyone. Find out more about
> what's free from AOL at AOL.com
> <http://www.aol.com?ncid=AOLAOF00020000000437> .
> 	
>
> 	_______________________________________________
> 	New-Poetry mailing list
> 	New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> 	http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> <http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry>
> 	
> 	
>
>
>
>
> --
> "Memory believes before knowing remembers.  Believes longer than
> recollects, longer than knowing even wonders."
> -William Faulkner, Light in August
>
>
> http://museoffireblog.blogspot.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry