Poetry is an area for those who, after deep, meaningful, personal introspection have discovered that they truthfully have nothing better to do. ____________________ ...Poetry of the kind that has been discovered by a growing number of modern writers, the poetry of self which surpasses fiction and revolutionizes it....you do not so much perceive relationships as experience them....I am eternally grateful for being forced to be a poet...without that method of escape from self I would never have known that there was another world...my respect for the act of creativity grew. -Karl Shapiro, To Abolish Children and Other Essays, Quadrangle Books, Chicago, 1968, p.237, p.267 and p.271.
Poetry should be zany. Not only should it frolic, as Camus says, it should cavort, stumble, trip, fall flat on its face, get up, slither, fly, soar, dazzle, gloom, lash out and all those other things we do in life. -With thanks to Karl Shapiro, To Abolish Children and Other Essays, Quadrangle Books, Chicago, 1968, p.79.
That fatal tendency to sulk and melancholy, pomposity, dreariness in these and past days of often indestinguishable poetry and prose, in which the world is in flight from values, fight over values and nearly anarchic chaos and anyone, artist, public person, gets evaluated by the pawnbroker as near-saint, failed saint, Shylock, minor or major: the curator�s got his number, his place, the goose and the golden egg....
this fatal tendency is slowly coming to compete with a life-sized poetry, a real people-in-situ, right there, here, it, out there, looking at it, getting inside it, around it, in as many dimensions as one can, �cause we�re all in it now and where you are affects how it is and what we call truth. The very syllables and sounds, the very air we breath, the highest sensitivity to speech, its crystal waters and its frightening, deadly poison.
The great burgeoning of everything, every art, every science: to be able to digest, capture some part of it all, life, with profundity, pervasively, without prolixity, flavoured with the sacred, to give pleasure, is no mean task as one putters around, pastime, fulltime, we�re just talking �coterie� here-- not everyone clutches poetry to their hearts-- unless one defines it broadly: and we do, we do!
Ron Price 12 October 1995
-------------------- married and a teacher for 35 years. A Baha'i and a Canadian living in Australia for over 30 years.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
I thought the User Agreement quite specifically said "No Retards."
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Two sig lines and no post of his own aside from lame quotes?
Yeah...that "retard" thing definitely applies.
Posted by Dukhat (Member # 341) on :
Well, this IS the creativity section of Flare, but, dude, do you realize that this is a Sci-Fi board? Your poem doesn't exactly shine with references to spaceships & aliens.
Posted by Ritten (Member # 417) on :
What, the pawnbroker isn't some savage alien creature out to steal the souls of all mankind in a night of falling on it face while tripping and stumbling?
Crap, I guess I read too much in to it.
Posted by Krenim (Member # 22) on :
I've been mulling over what to do with this thread since yesterday. It's not exactly harmful, but it's not appropriate to this forum. This is for science fiction artwork and soforth. Now, if you've got any Farscape poetry, bring it on. Sure, we may totally laugh at it... Scratch that, we will totally laugh at it, but it would at least be appropriate.