Stephen, the anger I have is the anger I have. It's not circumstantial. For
myself, I have had a lovely time in the last few days, went to a beautiful
concert last night, a delightful meal on Friday, etc etc. what happened with
poor Umi is a dark stain across all that, for fuck's sake, pardon my French,
she's only 21.
and this stuff does matter with poetry, one of the few things I know, about
the art, is that is never good enough, so that one has to try, and try
again, and always fail, because we always end up with:
words, words, words
To quote a certain someone.
Best
Dave
----- Original Message -----
From: "Stephen Vincent" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, December 18, 2005 11:05 PM
Subject: Re: People as a broken objects reassembled:
> > Discussions about anything can be a load of hot air; I can't see how the
> >>> human passions and desires and fragilities that they express are not,
> >>> however, part of life.
> >>>
>
> Sometimes I think when something happens is totally beyond our influence
or
> control, it's natural (in anger, grief, whatever) to go on the attack, or
> eliminate the value of something else.
> David, with total respect for your sadness and/or whatever strong feelings
> surround the situation of your friend, I don't think poetry or the
> discussion of it is the blame. It's true, I would agree, poetry is often,
> for the most part, useless in the immediate situation - tho I suspect one
> often hears refrains from familiar work that are "on target."
> I was once in the start of a major - and obviously to be disastrous -
civil
> war. Many of us were writing like mad - poem after poem - to see if
somehow
> our language would some divert the principals to 'negotiations.' Lots of
> luck - maybe similar to trying to stop a Tsunami. In that situation I
kept
> telling myself this sense of futility - the futility of language to be an
> instrument that could alter the present - was the reason poet's wrote with
> the possibility of a work becoming 'immortal.' (I don't even know if,
> finally, I kept those poems!) Helas, even once considered 'immortal',
poems
> get thrown out of the canon, even violently so!
>
> When somebody is 'over the top', drugs and containment trump language.
> Poems, healing come later. As to people who are clearly on their way to
the
> other side, the presence of well read poetry can be transfiguring and part
> of the process. Then there are the poems for us who participate and
survive
> each of these passings.
>
> Anger, your anger here, I suspect, a natural part of a starting core.
>
> Stephen V
> Blog: http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
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