Frederick -
Please allow me a few comments.
Thank you,
Frank (the other FP)
>The Car Alarm
>
>
>Somewhere a car alarm, deeply upset, ...[How can an inanimate object be "deeply
upset"?]
>parades its repertoire of bleeps and blurts ...[No object can "parade" a
"repertoire". Better the plain details?]
>( - question: as various as a bird's?) again. ...[What if you'd contrasted the
car alarm against bird song in a direct manner, allow
the "things"
to convey the message themselves? It takes trust. Learning that trust
is, I think,
central to poetry, closer to the transcendence image/language is capable
of achieving.
In my opinion, good poetry doesn't emote. It astonishes, even the poet,
with the
uncommon revealed in a common scene.]
>Indoors, nanotechnology, ...[The next 4 lines from here lend nothing to the
philosopher at his desk that follows.]
>with quiet smoothings, roughenings, and shadings, ...[Way too many "ing's" going
on in these two lines, by the way.]
>steadily joins furnishings
>to their owner's taste.
>>From his changeless desk, a philosopher
>observes these continuities and thinks
>awhile of the obsolescence
>of the critical gesture
>that tacitly dismisses brutal thoughts
>and actions as in some way inauthentic. ...[Inauthentic? Car alarm, bird song, a
guy and a desk. Inauthentic? No where is such
a leap justified
by the preceding lines.]
>He wonders whether a worldview ...[Frederick, there is a voice in you, your
voice, that you are trying to reach, let out. You are
scratching on its surface.
It's frustrating, I know first hand, but it is the journey. The rest
of this "poem" is a shadow
dance, an attempt at authentic statement dressed up to look like
a poem. What's important
here, to me anyway, is not the failure of this poem. What's important
is, a part of you is
answering the call to poetry. For me, it began with surrendering any
"idea" of what poetry is
and following nouns and verbs through the "song" of everyday
"things". For me
anyway...]
>or art pursued in ignorance
>of vital facts the rest of the world knows
>may be in some sense true.
>Is any question actually invalid?
>He ponders the reactionary
>concept of *metaxy -
>the "middle" stance, the Mean we should agree on -
>and thinks that, with the amount
>of suffering in the world
>(including that car's),
>the balance would have to be placed
>to one side:
>far nearer the untrammeled
>breast-possession fantasies of infancy
>than any fact.
>Which reminds him where he got started:
>one of those parties in high school
>where the constraints of selfhood
>are eagerly discussed.
>He forgets if it was the tone
>or point of someone's chatter
>that made him see and say, "You're a total jerk,"
>but he remembers the dude
>collapsing on himself -
>teeth and grieving eyes
>dissolving into
>a stain among the other party stains.
>Girls standing around
>protested, but the philosopher
>thinks: If I'd done a few more of those,
>everything would be better.
>
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