7 Things You Should Know
January 1, 2008
(about poetry and being a poet)
1. A word assemblage isn’t a poem just because someone says it is; no one really knows what a poem is.
2. Most readers of poetry are poets; no one reads poetry anymore.
3. Calling oneself a poet is to call attention to how one doesn’t fit; poets are one of the varieties of misfit that can’t be fixed.
4. Form is an obsolete means by which the academic old-guard have tried to control the world of poetry to their advantage; writing with forms is one of the most freeing experiences a poet can hope for.
5. It’s more fun to call attention to the poems you like than to rant at the poems you don’t (and it hurts less); ranting will always attract more readers than poems.
6. Poets are solipsistic navel-gazing introverts of the highest order, dreawing the curtains around themselves tighter and tighter; poets have egos like bodybuilders have biceps.
7. Poetry speaks and says what nothing else can; silence is poetry.
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All me-stream all the time.
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January 2nd, 2008 at 5:40 am
Time to tune back in at the Cafe? Probably not. Unless there’s a new voice there we’ve probably heard all we’re going to hear. But them’s fightin’ words, Son, of the “What is Art” nature. I would offer an addendum to #6 “…biceps, or geeks have pencil necks.”