Thursday, November 10, 2005
Sending poetry
I wish I'd get a little more edgy stuff, maybe even some post-avantish poems, for The Eleventh Muse. I can't guarantee that I'd take them, but I'd like to see more. It would definitely be more interesting than another hundred of the following:
- Poet goes for walk in woods, has vague new-age-spiritual epiphany.
- Privileged, probably white poet writes patronizingly about encounter with poor/oppressed person.
- Poet writes to dead, much better poet--usually Sylvia Plath, but many other options.
- Poet writes about poet's writing process (not even up to ars poetica).
- Poet's metrical poem requires metrical padding (or rhymes night/light, breath/death, etc.)
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From William Matthew's "Dull Subjects":
To forestall such fruitless labors, I hereby offer a short but comprehensive summary of subjects for lyric poetry.
1. I went out into the woods today and it made me feel, you know, sort of religious.
2. We’re not getting any younger.
3. It sure is cold and lonely (a) without you, honey, or (b) with you, honey.
4. Sadness seems but the other side of the coin of happiness, and vice versa, and in any case the coin is too soon spent and on we know not what.
One could, I suppose if one were possessed of a mania for condensation and categorization, offer a single ur-plot for lyric poetry and indeed for all imaginative literature, and if so, one could do worse than the following four—word sentence, a plot summary of the Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour film, The Road to Bali: “Amorous gorilla pursues Hope.”
To forestall such fruitless labors, I hereby offer a short but comprehensive summary of subjects for lyric poetry.
1. I went out into the woods today and it made me feel, you know, sort of religious.
2. We’re not getting any younger.
3. It sure is cold and lonely (a) without you, honey, or (b) with you, honey.
4. Sadness seems but the other side of the coin of happiness, and vice versa, and in any case the coin is too soon spent and on we know not what.
One could, I suppose if one were possessed of a mania for condensation and categorization, offer a single ur-plot for lyric poetry and indeed for all imaginative literature, and if so, one could do worse than the following four—word sentence, a plot summary of the Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour film, The Road to Bali: “Amorous gorilla pursues Hope.”
Oh, forgot to mention, Matthews basic idea in this essay is that it's not the poem's subjects which are dull, but rather the poems themselves: "It is not, of course, the subject that is or isn’t dull, but the quality of attention we do or do not pay to it, and the strength of our will to transform. Dull subjects are those we have failed."
Yes, it's definitely about quality. I do think, though, that certain subjects are tired enough that extra craft is required, and certain subjects surprising enough that slightly slacker writing will still do.
Yeah, I'd buy that. However I'd add that the success of a poem includes it's relationship to inherited rhetorical "form" as well. Often you get poems that try to shock but fail because they just plunk "unusual" subjects into a flawed template. I started a post on this which incorporates much of what's here.
Well, I would submit my work to 11muse, but you insist on posted submissions. You also insist on original, unpublished work which, because all my poems go on my website means my stuff is automatically excluded. And anyway, what's wrong with poems about epiphanies in the woods and burying dead kittens?
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Rik:
Maybe you ought to read the Muse submission guidelines again. The relevant passage:
"You may submit by e-mail if you meet any of the following criteria: you live outside the United States . . ."
I also find it kind of amusing that you say all your poems "go on your website" as if you have no control over that.
Y'know, if you send me poetry that knocks my socks off, I'm probably not going to care too much if if it's on a personal website. Jeffery Bahr has much of his work on his personal website too...
Maybe you ought to read the Muse submission guidelines again. The relevant passage:
"You may submit by e-mail if you meet any of the following criteria: you live outside the United States . . ."
I also find it kind of amusing that you say all your poems "go on your website" as if you have no control over that.
Y'know, if you send me poetry that knocks my socks off, I'm probably not going to care too much if if it's on a personal website. Jeffery Bahr has much of his work on his personal website too...
Oh, perfect! Ha!
My favorite Bad Example is the sort of poem that goes:
I drank some coffee today. Look, there's my coffee table, or my garden, or my cafe.
What to write? Hmm. I like pretty colors.
My parents are dead. We never talked!
Do I have any emotions?
Then I brushed my teeth and thought about all that.
I call them the Humdrums.
The "current events" poems chap my hide, too. When there's some big terrible news the day of a reading, you can bet someone's going to stand up and say, "This is a little bit... RAW..." Brace yourself for missing limbs!
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My favorite Bad Example is the sort of poem that goes:
I drank some coffee today. Look, there's my coffee table, or my garden, or my cafe.
What to write? Hmm. I like pretty colors.
My parents are dead. We never talked!
Do I have any emotions?
Then I brushed my teeth and thought about all that.
I call them the Humdrums.
The "current events" poems chap my hide, too. When there's some big terrible news the day of a reading, you can bet someone's going to stand up and say, "This is a little bit... RAW..." Brace yourself for missing limbs!
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