Poetry and Poetastry

[Fade to Black]

Normandy by Matthew Wong

The brain is often like a battlefield
Strewn with so many dead toy soldiers
And letters to women and children
Who will never be seen, again or
For the first time, and blades
Of grass that weep for the flowers
Lying face down in the sand, perhaps
A watch stuck at four fifteen
In the afternoon forever, and mother
Calls your name out loud
From behind, louder again
Now, "Did you hear what
I said? Billy your dinner's ready!"

[Philipppp]

Via Media by Karin Boye

I once asked for joy without limits,
I once asked for sorrow, infinite as space.
I wonder if modesty grows with the years?
Fair, fair is joy, fair also is sorrow.
But fairest is to stand on pain's battlefield
with stilled mind and see that the sun is shining.

[trentk]

#inSearchOfTruePoetry

“Bad poetry is false, I grant; but nothing is truer than true poetry. And let me tell the scientific men that artists are much finer and more accurate observers than they are, except of the special minutiae that the scientific man is looking for.”

(This quote is especially interesting as it comes from CS Peirce who was vastly more a man of science than a man of art. My temperament also tends more towards the mathematico-scientific than the artistic.)

[Verdandi]

Abseits im Garten blüht der böse Schlaf,
in welchem die, die heimlich eingedrungen,
die Liebe fanden junger Spiegelungen,
die willig waren, offen und konkav,

und Träume, die mit aufgeregten Masken
auftraten, riesiger durch die Kothurne -:
das alles stockt in diesen oben flasken
weichlichen Stengeln, die die Samenurne

(nachdem sie lang, die Knospe abwärts tragend,
zu welken meinten) festverschlossen heben:
gefranste Kelche auseinanderschlagend,
die fieberhaft das Mohngefäß umgeben.

Rainer Maria Rilke, Schlaf-Mohn

Far from the other flowers, sinful sleep
grows here: any who softly enter in
are free to taste the love of young reflections,
accommodating, open, not too deep:

they may see dreams appear in antic masks,
raised up as tall as giants upon buskins:
such gifts are stored within these supple stems,
which bear the seed heads, still supporting them
errect and sealed, though they had seemed prepared
to fade, had let tired buds hang down:
nowthey make valanced petals open wide
around their capsules, each a fevered sun.

I don't like this translation much, but it's the only one I could find.

[MJRH]

Myles na gCopaleen holds forth on poetry

Having considered the matter in--of course--all its aspects, I have decided that there is no excuse for poetry. Poetry gives no adequate return in money, is expensive to print by reason of the waste of space occasioned by its form, and nearly always promulgates illusory concepts of life. But a better case for the banning of all poetry is the simple fact that most of it is bad. Nobody is going to manufacture a thousand tons of jam in the expectation that five tons may be eatable. Furthermore, poetry has the effect on the negligible handful who read it of stimulating them to write poetry themselves. One poem, if widely disseminated, will breed perhaps a thousand inferior copies. The same objection cannot be made in the case of painting or sculpture, because these occupations afford employment for artisans who produce the materials. Moreover, poets are usually unpleasant people who are poor and who insist forever on discussing that incredibly boring subject, 'books'. If you examine it carefully you will find that it is quite meaningless but since when did such a trifle matter? Poets don't matter and an odd senseless bit of talk matters little either. What is important is food, money, and opportunities for scoring off one's enemies. Give a man those three things and you won't hear much squawking out of him.

---

I was once acquainted with a man who found himself present by some ill chance at a verse speaking bout. Without a word he hurried outside and tore his face off. Just that. He inserted three fingers into his mouth, caught his left cheek in a frenzied grip and ripped the whole thing off. When it was found, flung in a corner under an old sink, it bore the simple dignified expression of the honest man who finds self-extinction the only course compatible with honour.