[New-Poetry] Goetsch's greed

[Halvard Johnson]

I don't think looking for solutions is wrong, Chris, just
that they can be frustrating. And frustration's not necessarily
a bad thing either. I enjoy doing crossword puzzles and
sudoku, and find them frustrating (and don't always find
my way through or out of them). On the other hand,
not finishing a puzzle of some sort (not solving it so to
say) has never bothered me much. I also don't mind
journeys that end up somewhere other than the place I
started out for.

So, in short, I agree with you.

Hal

"Open the mirage that calls you."
		--Philip Lamantia

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


On Jul 17, 2007, at 10:48 PM, Chris Lott wrote:

> 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
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