I Am Retarded (grad school woes)

i typed this in an aim conversation a few years ago

i don’t want to view poetry the same way a business man views making progress reports

i was thinking too

(i think a lot about the theory of poetry, but i never write it down…i think maybe because i don’t want to commit to it…i want it to be susceptible to change)

anyway

in study of lit

we talked about literature (or all of art) adapting the jargon structure of science

as in

the same way we talk about science we must talk about art

but i think that’s wrong

because art, no matter what art you want to talk about, never created the atomic bomb, or biological warfare

i do not think art should be discussed like science in any manner

because art’s purpose is to defend us against all that terrible garbage humanity has lined up for us

and i think, no matter what artist, they have some understanding of this

because…the rest of the world is moving one way, and the artist is moving counter to that

though the art itself may not reflect it in any way

the artist however is always a revolutionary figure

thoughts like that…are why i don’t write every day…because having a thought like that is just as good as writing a poem

So I’ve given up (at least for the time being)

No one doubts that writing poems is hard. At least, people that try and write a “good” poem and continuously fail. I have been trying for quite some time now (years) and have little to show in terms of creation. I have poems, but I know what is wrong with them, and they are not worth attempting to fix.

My main problem results from: I want to go back to writing without thinking about it so much, just write from impulse. However, I was writing like that when I was 17, in a hugely imitative Ginsberg/Whitman phase (yes, I even used the “O” in my poems). So in a way I don’t want it back. I blame school for taking that away from me. I learned how to think about writing in a different way, and I can’t say that it’s the best way because I’ve constantly faltered creatively because of it. Intellectually though, I know I have spread out my area of reading (though I still have found 20th Century American Poetry pre-1980, not just The Beats, to be my favorite). So schooling was a double-edged sword for me. But what is most important, is getting back to that early ideology behind creation while bringing along the things that I have learned throughout the years.

The Spicer lectures jarred me in a manner that I didn’t expect. Spicer’s metaphor of radio for poetic composition really got me thinking about where poems come from. Spicer argues that they come from the “Outside”, from what he antagonistically dubs “Martians”, and the poet is merely a receptor of these signals and attempts to interpret them as best as humanly possible. I’ve always liked to think that poems come from me, and even if i’m on some kind of automatic writing, it’s still me. However the fact that I am not in control is an appealing idea. One that might fit well into Spicer’s model, and more importantly, with my recent confusion.

And this is where I get to thinking about it too much.

And this is where I tell you that I am taking a break from writing poems. Though, what I might do is try to write fragments of things I’m telling myself not-to-do or what I shouldn’t do. Of course this still is a bit too mental for me, and yet again, therein lies the problem.

Another problem that comes in is that I can’t actually stop writing poems. Spicer says in one of his lectures that a person that wants to become a junky or a poet is a fool. The implications of this statement are far-reaching. Poems are addicting. Withdrawl from poems for too long makes me irritable. Poems are junk. I don’t think I’ll ever completely stop writing them because it’s what I’ve chosen to do, or maybe they chose me.

I think the best thing for poets to do, especially those going or graduating from school, is to not think about it so much, train yourself not to think about it. This is advice that comes  from Spicer rather than myself, but in this context it applies tenfold.

The Difficulty of Writing Poems

Sitting down to write, pen to paper, fingers to keyboard…etc we begin with either a solid start or a vague notion of where we want to go. As we begin, the process unravels towards the opposite we started from (the clear beginning becomes vague or vice versa).

How is it that we keep writing? One aspect that allows us to keep writing the poem out is the syllables we hear, sustaining our chosen aesthetics of movement/sound. It is after we have found the right phoneme (or collection of) that we add context. [Given that our own context is on the page, it is susceptible to multiple interpretations. There is no right or wrong, true or false, the poem’s sense is provided by the reader/critic or the poet as a reader of his/her own work.(These assertions come out of Wittgenstein’s Blue Book and Part I of his Philosophical Investigations.)]

Speaking of context, it should be said, sense is not implicit in context (this is something illustrated by Dada poets). Context is the thread of the definitions of words appearing in the poem. Sense is only derived after a context has been interpreted. An aspect of contextual interpretation is also a technical one, punctuation aides in how the poem reads, which is contributing factor in determining the context (it is not just definition, but punctuation, enjambment, alliteration, sound, movement, etc.) Yes, this is the technical analysis but this analysis only allows a narrow interpretation of the poem. Context is necessary to enhance the technical aspects of the poem (After all, you do not look at a painting only for brushstrokes, or a photograph only for object arrangement).

These are more than assumptions because nothing in (any) art is done whimsically; there is always purpose; just as buildings are not arbitrarily constructed, neither are poems or other works of art.

Context is easy to overlook because verbal language is the most common way we express ourselves to others. Though a painter may elicit impressions in us with color, the painting is framed for us, there is a limit, orange will always be orange. There is no limit to poetry because it is never closed. The poem might have a visual beginning and end, but it is worth more than just a thousand words; it is an ever-changing ongoing experience. Verbal language is open to larger interpretation because it is abysmal. Colors in a painting or photograph are different because of their stagnant characteristic. (Not to dismiss the latter artistic mediums, they just have different aims of expression).

What this means for poetry and its context is this: sound will always be there, the poem should embrace the definition of its words (context). It is in this that poetry says something about the world.