[New-Poetry] Goetsch's greed

[Chris Lott]

On 7/17/07, Halvard Johnson <halvard at earthlink.net> wrote:
> But the frustration resides in viewing the poem
> as something requiring a solution.

Seems to me it's just another way of saying that there are poems out
there that don't provide any satisfaction or happiness or emotional
return or whatever you want to insert at the end of that sentence. You
can turn every one of them around on its ear and claim that's not what
poetry is about, but obviously to some readers each is and those
readers find what they are looking for in some poems and not in
others.

Obviously, some poems do reward searching for solutions or R.S. would
never be happy. If it isn't wrong to derive some satisfaction that way
it is just as right to notice that some poems don't work by that
criterion. Even Hal, I imagine, finds some poems less than satisfying
(or whatever adjective you want to use, just to presumptively avoid
that quibble). And assuming that you do (otherwise why not publish
them all?) is there any productivity to just reversing your
observation and saying "perhaps the problem is in looking for [insert
your adjective here]"?

In other words, I don't think looking for a way to solve a poem is
necessarily wrong... it just isn't always right.

c