What is Poetry?

What is it about poetry

What is it about iambic pentameter

& sentences with bad grammar

that make people want to whip

out some obscure piece

of eighteenth century garbage

written by a crying lunatic

and read them at funerals

or weddings

or patriotic events

What is it @ this form

What

Why

No, I really want you to think about why

Mrs. Sellers, that was my fifth grade teacher by the way, said the first person you always ask is Mr. Webster - He may not have the answer you are looking for - but he will show you how to ask the question.

Mr. Webster says a poem is –

a rhythmical composition in language more concentrated and imaginative than ordinary speech

and a poet is –

one who expresses themselves with beauty of thought and language

So poetry is Beauty of Thought?

Cannons to the Left of Me

Cannons to the Right of Me

The Ten Thousand in Front of Me

And Death Rides All Around Me

While the Raven Quoteth – Nevermore

Annabelle Lee?

Edgar Allen Poe is proof enough that poetry isn’t pretty

Poe was an ugly man, who wrote hauntingly ugly poetry about painfully ugly subjects

Poetry can’t be just about beauty can it?

Is poetry a unique human condition?

Dogs don’t speak in Haiku

Or do they

Have you ever seen a dog do a flip in the air and catch a ball or a jungle cat stalking?

Absolute poetry in motion

We think in poetry

We think in abstracts

Raise you hand if you punctuate your thoughts

Thank you ee cummings

& in your face Mrs. Jones

Well here’s my poem and there’s my book and I do what I want to – and I don’t use commas

Poetry is a picture -

with a rhyming roll

set to freeze and hold

just that bit of gold

that needs be told

or maybe ring it out

with a grossly overworded shout

& flashing epitaphs

& bad lies with no depth

Poetry is simplicity -

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day

Compare thee to a summer’s day

tis more

tis more

tis more than you or I could ever say

or have the courage to display

our inmost thoughts in this meanest of ways

a summer’s day

a summer’s day

comparing thee to a summer’s day

I never would have gone that way

Poetry is here

& it’s always been this way

& you don’t even know that it is influencing every part of your society and thought

Poetry of motion

Poetry of action

Poetry of grieving

Poetry of loss

Poetry of advertising

Poetry of music and dance and detail and design

Come on

Tell me you don’t look at a 1952 baby blue corvette – or maybe cherry red – and not see poetry of form and function

We have poetic justice

And poetic license – which I’m using right now by Not Using Commas in the piece

Poetry is love –

Erotic love

Stupid blanked faces staring deep into each other’s eyes with nothing at all resembling a trace of actual thought between them

A disaster in motion

I give them six months

& poetry is a couple walking down the street holding hands after 52 years of marriage

not speaking

not even looking in the same direction yet still sharing the exact same thoughts

thru that little connection

in their hearts

& the light touch as their pinkies graze against each other

lazily circling at the fingertips

Poetry is thought –

Abstract ideas & words mixed with pictures & emotions & memories & sounds & smells & touches

This is how we think

Let me tell you –

If you think in prose with complete sentences in paragraph form

then you are waay too uptight

you have to learn to relax that hiney-hole a little because you are missing the music of life –

the poetry

…and that would be a shame.