[New-Poetry] subject matters

[Halvard Johnson]

Well, as I said before, I don't think poems need to have subject,
though sometimes they may indeed have subjects, and often they
may seem to have subjects. The point of my quip was that poems
do not need to be "about" anything. Which is to say, they don't
need to be discursive, in the way prose usually is.

I might have to agree with Skip, though, that poems are "about"
subjects such as words, phrases, sentences, sounds, images, even
ideas. Which is something like saying playgrounds are "about"
knees and shins and muscles and lungs, not to mention kids and
au pairs.

Hal

"Poetic statements are no more actual statements
  than the peaches visible in a still life are actual dessert."
				--Susanne K. Langer

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 Sep 6, 2007, at 3:34 PM, jforjames at aol.com wrote:

> 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
>
> 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
>
> "
> Email and AIM finally together. You've gotta check out free AOL Mail!
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