Poetry

zebra -- you're solid nails.

And that one is so much better than The Wasteland, which is utter bullshit, despite having some lovely phrases.

 

Sure, I just didn't want to get all encyclopedic.

And for Palli, I have to say that I may be more receptive to poetry as an everyday thing only because I don't listen to much popular music anymore. Maybe that's part of it. It may be too, that through some quirks in my patchwork education, I've spent as much time studying with poets as I have with nonfiction and fiction writers. So poetry doesn't seem academic to me, if that makes any sense. It's something a lot of my friends and mentors do for a living. I've been really lucky in that regard. Really lucky with my mentors in general.

Having said all that, I have really catholic tastes in the form, from Homer to Denis Johnson. I'll read anybody once.

 

no rhyming couplets
iambic pentameter
needed by Bubbler

 

There's your in, Bubs.

Poetry -- good poetry, at least -- was meant to be read aloud.

If you can find, at your library, a record of Ginsberg reading America, or Dylan Thomas reading any of his stuff, pick it up.

You'll dig.

 

Iron_Chet, he posts
Makes foes tremble at his prose
Master of haiku

 

IMO, the best poetry is poetry you read and instantly relate to, on any number of levels. If you can't understand it, it's not "speaking" to ya.

And jg, I know this will sound completely antithetical to the usual advice for writers (read, read and read some more), but one of the reasons I'm not very interested in reading poets is that I don't want to be influenced by them. I look at that type of writing as intensely personal, and, as such, I don't want someone else's thoughts/style, etc. creeping in, even subconsciously.

 

You're a gentleman and a Jesuit, my friend.

 

I think that's an apt caveat.

But I also encourage young writers to imitate their betters. Briefly, and in a controlled setting. I go so far as to have them hand-copy chunks of classic texts, to get a feel for what it's like to write that way.

I do this because I think it helps speed them toward a voice of their own, and gets the mimicry out of their systems a little faster.

Poetry's different though, as you point out, and having one or two powerful voices in your head can be problematic. That's why I try to keep my noggin filled with lots of different voices at all times, so I'm not shoplifting anyone in particular.

That said, though, TS Eliot was the one who told us that "Good writers borrow. Great writers steal."

 

He pretty much had to say that, though, since Pound probably wrote most of his memorable lines.

 

Nice little Hitchens piece on Mr. Ezra "I'm Cantos Crazy!" Pound in this month's Atlantic.

 

My favorite poet is Spaceman.

 

A guy advocates for a few fascist regimes, and he has to hear about it for eternity.

I will check that out, though, despite my utter loathing of Hitchens.