[New-Poetry] A short essay on poetry

[TheOldMole]

Nice.

I'm unfortunately stuck here at the computer because my legs have walked 
off.

David Graham wrote:
> *A Short Essay On Poetry*
>  
> A poet who observes his own poetry ends up, in spite of it, by finding 
> nothing to observe, just as a man who pays too much attention to the 
> way he walks, finds his legs walking off from under him. Nevertheless, 
> poets must sometimes look at themselves in order to remember what they 
> are risking. What I see as poetry is a sample of the human scene, its 
> incurably acute melancholia redeemed only by affection. This sample of 
> endurance is innocent and gay: the music of vowel and consonant is the 
> happy-go-lucky echo of time itself. Without this music there is simply 
> no poem. It borrows further gaiety by contrast with the burden it 
> carries -- for this exquisite lilt, this dance of sound, must be 
> married to a responsible intelligence before there can occur the poem. 
> Naturally, they are one: meanings and music, metaphor and thought. In 
> the course of poetry's career, perhaps new awarenesses discovered, 
> really new awarenesses and not verbal combinations brought together in 
> any old way. This rather unimportant novelty is sometimes a play of 
> possibility and sometimes a genuinely new insight: like /Tristram 
> Shandy/, they add something to this Fragment of Life.
>  
> -– David Schubert
> (1941)
>
> Blog:  /The Best American Poetry. /  10/18/08
> http://thebestamericanpoetry.typepad.com/the_best_american_poetry/
>
>
>
> ========================================
> David Graham
> grahamd at ripon.edu <mailto:grahamd at ripon.edu>
>
> Home Page:
> http://web.mac.com/drjazz
>
> Poetry Library:
> http://web.mac.com/drjazz/iWeb/Site/DGPoLibrary.html
> ==========================================
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>   

-- 
Tad Richards
http://www.opus40.org/tadrichards/
http://opusforty.blogspot.com/

Don't forget to order your copy of FILM NOIR!
http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=2712239