How does a poem begin?
How does a poem begin? Wait a second here: what actually is a
goddamn poem? I mean, really? The Cegast Academy offers: Poetry is a form of
literary expression that uses language and literary devices to evoke emotions,
convey ideas, and create aesthetic experiences in the audience. Popular
features of poetry are diction and imagery, figurative expression, condensed
use of language, deliberate use of words and expressions, rhyme, rhythm and sound
devices.
Hm,
seems like much of this is also used in prose, by many writers, while certain
poets avoid many of these same devices as being too formal and chi-chi literary. Jack Spicer said “a
really perfect poem has an infinitely small vocabulary.” Aram Saroyan has a
one-word poem: “lighght.” Then, of course, there are the concrete and visual
poets who tend to eliminate the written word altogether. And the hybrid form.
Phil Hall snagged a GG with his book, Killdeer,
a collection he labeled ‘essay-poems.’ Michael Ondaatje’s book, The Collected Works of Billy the Kid is
a mix of poetry and prose, the total of which was listed as poetry. Same for
W.C. Williams’ Patterson. Then
there’s the tricky prose poem. Don’t get me started.
Particular
songwriters have been called poets: Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Patti Smith,
Leonard Cohen…in a manner which seems to infer an elevation in artistry,
whereas we know that there is much poetry produced which is regarded with
disdain by the literati, that of the Hallmark Greeting Card or Cowboy variety.
When Chaucer wasn’t writing his literary masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales, he relaxed writing dirty limericks: poetry,
or no?
Here
are a few words from the wise:
— Poetry is the way we help give name to the
nameless so it can be thought [Audre Lorde]
— Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens
with real toads. [Marianne Moore]
— Poetry is language at its most distilled and
most powerful. [Rita Dove]
— Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the
poet believes to be interior and personal which the reader recognizes as his
own. [Salvatore Quasimodo]
— Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful
feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility. [William
Wordsworth]
— Poetry is ordinary language raised to the nth
power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held
together by the delicate, tough skin of words. [Paul Engle]
— Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living
on land, wanting to fly in the air. [Carl Sandburg]
— Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but
an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape
from personality. [T.S. Eliot]
Heavy,
if not slightly confusing, even contradictory, though I tend to lean toward
Eliot, personally. I remember reading something by someone — sorry, the
specifics elude me — who said that a postmodernist text is a text in which the
term “postmodernist” is used. It seems to me that, in a similar fashion, a poem
is anything anyone calls a poem.
Bottom
line, if anything can pass for a poem these days, then any subject — no matter
how grand, fabulous, or trivial, from a war in the Middle East to the
contemplation of one’s navel — can be used as grist for the poetry mill, and
it’s really up to the inclination and caprice, often, of the particular
creator. Now, whether or not that once-finished poem finds an accepting and
positive responding audience, is a whole other kettle of fish fry.
Roses are red, violets are purple…
There, I’ve begun. Go
ahead, you take it from here.
Stan Rogal lives and writes in Toronto along with his artist partner Jacquie Jacobs and their pet jackabee. His work has appeared almost magically in numerous magazines and anthologies. The author of several books, plus a handful of chapbooks, a 13th poetry collection will be published in March 2025 with ecw press. Co-founder of Bald Ego Theatre and former coordinator of the popular Idler Pub Reading Series.