Along the lines of recent literary misdemeanors, it might serve to keep in
mind that a poem is a living thing. Whether insect or bird or fish or
plantlife, the poem is alive.
A breathing organism. The poem is not so much the source of meaning or
beauty, but affords the experience of revelation to that end.
As a living creature, (surely language is that in and of itself, and
literature is a society in which language-lifeforms exist in perpetuity. As
a poem by Yeats will never be vanquished. It is a legitimate form of life as
anyone or anything that has ever existed.
One could also make of this procreation that a poem can be judged as a
person can be judged. What is its contribution? Effect?
As people are credited or discredited for what they do. Contribution to
society. Innovative or just another pretty face.
What is memorable about a person? To what good end did their lives amount
to?
Ernest Slyman
HomePage
www.geocities.com/soho/7514
email: [log in to unmask]
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|