[New-Poetry] Poetics (was Poetic Justice)

[Bob Grumman]

lsg wrote:
> I'm wondering if Bob Grumman has invented a new art:  it is not poetry 
> at all, but something else entirely.  Even though it is related to 
> poetry, it may be so different as to deserve its own category.  Like 
> songs and poems are related but are not categorized together.  Dance 
> and acrobatics (gymnastics) are related but still different enough to 
> own separate categories of endeavor...
Beware, Linda Sue, I'm a taxonomaniac and neologizer.  You've just 
gotten me to coin "physibition" for the art of expressing oneself 
through physical actions: the dance, acrobatics, gymnastics, diving, ice 
skating, water ballet, baton twirling, etc.  As for a separate category 
for poems like "lighght," I think you're too late: they've long been 
called poems.  Also, it makes more sense to consider them a sub-category 
of poetry rather than a whole new category since they are entirely 
verbal.  Visual poems which include purely graphic material are less 
easy to call poetry but they're as much literature as the drama is.  
They, too have long been called poetry by a lot of people, although many 
have claimed they are not, almost always dismissively.  I prefer to 
limit the main categories, though, so class them "poems."


>  
> Again...just a thought...and you all might have already covered this 
> in depth...as I dip in and out of this list... I might have missed it.
>  
> lsg
>  
> PS  That situation of inventing new art forms is much different from 
> the cases where thugs beat up on older poets to get their doggerel 
> read.  When an artist actually invents a new art, he will probably 
> need to explain it and compare it to its closest cousins.
>
>     ----- Original Message -----
>     *From:* Bob Grumman <mailto:bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net>
>     *To:* NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp;Views
>     <mailto:new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
>     *Sent:* Saturday, November 01, 2008 5:49 PM
>     *Subject:* Re: [New-Poetry] Poetic Justice
>
>     A breath-taking poem, Judy?  Too easy for me.  All I have to do is
>     repeat my many posts here and elsewhere about "lighght." 
>     Breath-taking--when I have to emphasize, I first read it.  No
>     poem, or
>     any work of art, remains eternally breath-taking for me.
>
>     Why?  Because it was a pioneering minimalist poem, done when no
>     one else
>     was seriously engaged in making one-word poems--though it's
>     possible (I
>     don't know) that others had done one or two), and the idea of
>     trying for
>     maximum intensity in a minimum of text was new and potent.  Even more
>     important, I'm fairly sure it was the first poem to exploit silent
>     letters metaphorically for its central aesthetic effect.  Third,
>     it was
>     a good minor concrete poem, aside from its being a major infra-verbal
>     poem (poem dependent on what happens inside words rather than between
>     words).  Fourth, it is a brilliant (and original) expression of light
>     silently expanding.  By itself on a page, it makes those
>     appreciating it
>     experience the awesome magnitude of mere light, which is probably the
>     most important thing in existence.
>
>     Something similar happened to me when I caught on to Cummings's
>     falling
>     leaf poem.  I was knocked into what I call "Manywhere-at-Once,"
>     which is
>     being (literally, I believe) in more than one fully-felt
>     generally-rigorously disconnected compartments of your brain at
>     once. 
>     Lots of other poems have done this to me, most of them very
>     well-known,
>     but some not (including a few of my own!)  I mention the short ones
>     because it'd take too long to get into the longer ones.
>
>     One last shortie: Basho's haiku about the old pond.
>
>     But I think it may be that there are poems that don't click the way
>     these do for me that are in other ways as valuable--Frost's
>     "Stopping By
>     the Woods," for instance. . . .
>
>     --Bob G.
>
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