Did you know that poetry is one of most useless things out there? Yes, and that is just why it is so important. It has virtually no ability to advance our careers or make us richer, or even to make us appear smarter than we are. It is endangered, I would still say. The poet Shelly wrote a ringing endorsement of poetry, in which he called poets "the unacknowledged legislators of the world." That was in about 1820, but still, he was deluded. It's always been against long odds that anyone has written or cared about poetry, and the odds get progressively longer.
I am guilty of ignoring poetry as well (making this a confession). I get so caught up in the topical, the political, and the philosophical that I forget to do the reading that has less social utility but the most spiritual payoff: poetry.
This year I RESOLVE (and hope people help hold me to it) to read poetry often. That is all, not to write any poetry, but just to read it. Readers are what poetry most lacks. Poetry does not really lack poets, but without readers it is a cripple.
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New Year's Resolutions and Poetry
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- DWill
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- President Camacho
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Maybe we should make some motivational signs and hang them around booktalk.org to remind you and others to read poetry...
maybe something like
every day you don't read a poem a cripple dies... and we can have those little brown monsters on there chasing a boy in a wheelchair.
or maybe
read more poetry, think of the cripples... and have like a crippled crying like the indian in the ad. about littering.
The possibilities are endless.
maybe something like
every day you don't read a poem a cripple dies... and we can have those little brown monsters on there chasing a boy in a wheelchair.
or maybe
read more poetry, think of the cripples... and have like a crippled crying like the indian in the ad. about littering.
The possibilities are endless.
- DWill
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- President Camacho
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- DWill
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- GentleReader9
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DWill confessed:
And in conclusion, I am furthermore quite gratified and pleased to learn that someone, somewhere is making plans to take a well-deserved crack at President C. with a cane. You go, DWill.
The lines that came into my mind when I read this were:I am guilty of ignoring poetry as well (making this a confession). I get so caught up in the topical, the political, and the philosophical that I forget to do the reading that has less social utility but the most spiritual payoff: poetry.
Poetry
I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all
this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one
discovers in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise
if it must, these things are important not because a
high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because
they are
useful. When they become so derivative as to become
unintelligible,
the same thing may be said for all of us, that we
do not admire what
we cannot understand: the bat
holding on upside down or in quest of something to
eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless wolf
under
a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse that
feels a
flea, the base-
ball fan, the statistician--
nor is it valid
to discriminate against 'business documents and
school-books'; all these phenomena are important. One must
make a distinction
however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the
result is not poetry,
nor till the poets among us can be
'literalists of
the imagination'--above
insolence and triviality and can present
for inspection, 'imaginary gardens with real toads in them', shall
we have
it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,
the raw material of poetry in
all its rawness and
that which is on the other hand
genuine, you are interested in poetry.
Marianne Moore
And in conclusion, I am furthermore quite gratified and pleased to learn that someone, somewhere is making plans to take a well-deserved crack at President C. with a cane. You go, DWill.
"Where can I find a man who has forgotten the words so that I can talk with him?"
-- Chuang-Tzu (c. 200 B.C.E.)
as quoted by Robert A. Burton
-- Chuang-Tzu (c. 200 B.C.E.)
as quoted by Robert A. Burton
- Thomas Hood
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Genuinely Genius
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Poetry is useless
nor till the poets among us can be
'literalists of
the imagination'--above
insolence and triviality and can present
for inspection, 'imaginary gardens with real toads in them', shall
we have
it.
OK DWill...read one book by Billy Collins and tell me again how useless poetry is....frankly, I think there are plenty of current ones who have managed the above...and I think your New Year's determination to read a few of them is a great idea. Might even want to go back to William Carlos Williams now and then.
- DWill
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Re: Poetry is useless
Hmm...but remember, useless in a sense equals good. I enjoy Collins' poems.Marilyn Bielstein wrote: OK DWill...read one book by Billy Collins and tell me again how useless poetry