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

[Jason Quackenbush]

since i consider myself a lyric poet as much as anything, I have to  
say I feel a bit left out. I often try to leave things unsettled and  
I find that one of the best ways to do that is by setting up the  
complex of interrelating sounds with disconnecting sensual images  
with none of what yr calling a lyricule.

On Apr 4, 2009, at 1:50 PM, Bob Grumman wrote:

> 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
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry

Jason Quackenbush
jfq at myuw.net