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

[Judy Prince]

You might be onto something with this 'clang', Bob.  Have you run it and
your discussion thru/by/in the Harriet Blog on PF?  It could use a bitta
spice.  All mainstream outlets [I like that, 'mainstream outlets'] could use
an infuse of Grummanisms.  Not like labels and definitions oughtn't to be
refreshed occasionally.  That said, I follow only roughly half of what you
say most of the time, but so what; I register only half of most explainy
prose anyway.
Judy

2009/4/4 Bob Grumman <bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net>

> 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
>
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