Janet wrote:
>>When the poem is addressed to a "you" (as in Campion's poem posted by Jon)
is that person/character/entity/concept the audience, or is the audience the
unknown reader?.... When I'm writing from my own point of view to a specific
"you" I am saying something to that "you", but I'm also saying to the
reader, this is how I feel.<<
By way of juxtaposition and comparison, this is from Sam Hamill's essay,
"The Necessity to Speak." I don't know that I agree with him entirely, and
part of me thinks he is talking specifically about lyric poetry, but it is
interesting to think about in the context of this conversation:
"The true poet gives up the self. The *I* of my poem is not *me*. It is the
first person impersonal, it is permission for you to enter the experience
which we name Poem.
Although the poem itself is often a "given" thing, in the justice of poetry
we often earn the gift in some way. The disciplining of the self helps the
poet clarify the experience so that the experience itself may be yours with
as little superficial clutter as possible. The true poet asks for nothing
"in return" because the poem itself is given to the poet who, in turn, gives
it away and gives it away again. The poet is grateful for the opportunity to
serve.
The poet wants neither fame nor money, but simply to be of use.
I am not the *I* of my poem. But I am responsible for the poem and,
therefore, for that *I*. The poet invents a being, and that being, man or
woman, stands before the world, naked and feeling. Thus, the poet who
invents the persona of the poem is reflected similarly "undressed," and we
say, "This poet takes risks," because there is neither false modesty nor the
arrogance of exhibitionism, but the truth of human experience as it is, all
somehow beyond the mere words of the poem.
The poet may speak for the speechless, for the suffering and the wounded.
The poet may be a conscience, walking. The poet honors the humble most of
call because poetry is gift-giving. The poet adores the erotic because in a
world of pain there is charity and hope and because the poet aspires to a
condition of perpetual vulnerability.
But there are poets who murder and poets who lie. Dante placed the
corrupters of language in the seventh circle of Hell, and there are poets
among them. Christopher Marlowe was an assassin."
Richard
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