[New-Poetry] subject matters

[jforjames at aol.com]

Nice quip, but wouldn't that make the reader's mind into something like a 
scanner with OCR technology? A machine that recognizes the?text but 
doesn't read it per se. If reading is an active engagement with the text, 
it seems to me that no aspect of the poem is offlimits to the reader's delving. 
If you can analyze the sounds, why not the subject matter? If you can 
discuss the vocabulary/lexicon employed, why not the subject matter? And 
so on...


A reader should avoid irritable reaching after (pace Keats), but few good 
poems can get away without even a hint of being about something, except
maybe that...


There are dadaist and language poetries that have scrupulously evaded
content (although not always as successfully as they think they have)
or used odd bits & pieces of words/language that don't fit together
in a way that makes communication or a communion of minds possible.
But that's more of a subset of the artform we call poetry, and like
visual poetry (sorry, Bob) and sound poetry,it's not the core of 
what gets practised/made.


Then in certain poems there are those flights and fits of pure poetry 
here & there. Often inside poems that one would otherwise say are about 
something. Yet it's generally not something sustained over more than 
a passage or a half page. 


Wouldn't it be better to take up whistling and to avoid words altogether
if you so much wanted to avoid being understood?
Finnnegan

nal Message-----
From: Halvard Johnson <halvard at earthlink.net>
Bcc: jforjames at aol.com
Sent: Thu, 6 Sep 2007 12:56 pm
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] subject matters


nal Message-----
From: Halvard Johnson <halvard at earthlink.net>
Bcc: jforjames at aol.com
Sent: Thu, 6 Sep 2007 12:56 pm
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] subject matters


Seems to me that the best answer when someone asks?
"What's this poem about?" would be, say, "Oh, about?
fourteen lines long."?
?
Q: How long do one's legs have to be??
A: Long enough to reach the ground when?
? you're standing or walking.?
?
Hal?
?
"

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