From: fshck@UMAC on 24/04/2001 10:37 PM

surely one of the things a poem can be
for better or worse, for useless or less, is
a form of words claimed - overtly or covertly (for instance by context or
known/knowing poetic arrangement) - to be a poem...

like shit on your wall - it's art in the gallery but it's something else in the
gallery loo... or maybe not... you can always make a video... show the video in
the loo of the shit on the wall .... and on

and surely we're (oops there goes that we again) not going to start arguing
about whether certain arrangements of words are entitled to be poems or not?
please tell me we're not...

because if the very term 'poem' is going to be burdened with having to conform
to the dicates of what everybody thinks ought to be canonisable in a poem, if
every 'poem' has to get past every home censor, just to be a poem, then there's
going to be trouble isn't there?

surely it's best to regard whacko or simple or smug or nasty arrangements of
words claiming to be poems as uncontroversially so?


Christopher Kelen,
English Dept, University of Macau,
Taipa, Macao SAR, CHINA







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Subject: Re: POETRYETC Digest - 20 Apr 2001 to 21 Apr 2001 (#2001-4)




Ruark's comment that
>well it makes it sound better, the lines mark the
>space for the voice or song to move in, it is like a
>phonogram, the edge of the lines are the profile of
>the inner and outer breath of the poet/thinker, so the
>lines are a sort of sounding score so that readers can
>accurately trace a writers
>poetic/philosphical/political intentions. It really is
>quite simple

seems useful -- when applied to a poetic form of at least some complexity.
But I'm not sure it answers the original question about breaking a sentence
up & pretending it's poetry. Indeed, a prose poem, in which syntax, the
sound of words, the use of imagery & all the rest (if wanted), will have
great rhytmic intensity & play than these one word per line things we have
been seeing. The single sentence, or pair of sentences, just does not allow
for either much thinking or poetry. What we've been getting is, indeed,
'quite simple,' but I'm afraid I mean that very differently than Ruark
seems to. As far as that goes, even the rather lamentable pieces by Normam
Mailer were more fun, a bit more complex...

Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta
Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5
(h) [780] 436 3320 (b) [780] 492 0521
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm

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