[New-Poetry] From My Blog Something Barry Probably Won't Like

[Bob Grumman]

Here's an offhand thought I had in my blog entry today: there are 
basically three sorts of lyric poetry: happy nod poetry, ooo poetry, and 
resolved clang poetry.  Lovers of the first two want clangless poems 
that make them sigh, "Oh, yes, that's just the way I feel," or "Oh, yes, 
that's just what I think," or gurgle, "Ooo, what a pretty scene or lady 
or flower arrangement or whatever."  Lovers of the third want a poem to 
clang royally wrong, then (with some effort on their part) correct 
itself into a . . . blissimingly rich lyricule, or lyrical pay-off, 
usually a complex set of interrelating sensual images--which is to say, 
it will generally also be an ooo poem, a delayed ooo poem.  (Yes, a poem 
can be more than one kind of poem though only rarely will it not be most 
one kind; a poem, unfortunately, can also be none of the three kinds.)

The two principal ways a poem clangs wrong is by going radically 
off-course in some way, or by keeping too tediously on-course.  
"Lighght," for instance goes radically off-course in spelling, "old 
pond; and the sound of a frog/ splashing in" stays too tediously 
on-course.  Why, in the first case, one instinctively flares, is 
"lighght" misspelled?  In the second: what could possibly be the poetic 
point of telling us about some frog any pond would have that does what 
all frogs often do?  Those capable of appreciating such works will 
instinctively answer their instinctive questions almost immediately into 
lyricules (or lyrical pay-offs), the first a metaphoric coherence 
followed by growing awareness of its archetypal ramifications, the 
second of the tension of an array of dichotomies followed by growing 
awareness of their interrelated archetypal ramifications.

Yeah, the preceding is no doubt just a variation on  my standard 
boilerplate in favor of the difficult versus the "readable," or the 
unconventional versus the conventional.  I thought I might work on it to 
remove my obvious bias but decided not to.  I still think it worth 
thinking about.  If the Poetry Foundation ran it as a certified remark 
at its Harriet Blog, I think it'd generate a fair amount of discussion.

I will say, though, that I've composed, or tried to compose, poems of 
all three kinds--but I've usually tried to get a clanger into my 
specimens of the first two kinds.

--Bob