Thanksgiving weekend, Chanukah (beginning on December 2), and Christmas preparations in full swing will make this a busy week for many of us. I thought that instead of a typical prompt I'd share one of Marianne Moore's most famous poems – something to think about – a poem about poetry. Of course, if you do have time to write this week, how about writing your own poem about poetry?
Poetry
By Marianne Moore
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.
From Others for 1919: An Anthology of the New Verse, edited by Alfred Kreymborg.
Great poem by Moore!
ReplyDeleteAmazing poem! Thanks!
ReplyDeleteJamie
Makes you think, right?
ReplyDeleteItinerant Poet
ReplyDeleteHe arrived early and signed the reading list.
Then sat comfortably in uncomfortable plastic chairs.
Familiar with the routine,
he would listen to the featured poet –
forming all the time, thoughts about his own writing.
He wrote from heartache or tragedy,
of some uncertain event or desire,
his inner hopes,
those darkest fears -
feelings for which paper and pen were conceived.
He could hide himself in the words,
like a child in a wood’s thicket.
Though they all knew from his dew drop tears,
the quiver in his voice,
the emotional life center from which conceived.
The words he kept in plastic sleeves purchased at Staples
so the edges of his life’s travails would not fray.
Others thought he ought once in awhile
change these glassine windows to his soul,
when the view was smudged from the caresses of finger tips.
Once he may have thought more -
but after a lingering term,
he realized he wrote, but for himself.
People rarely asked him to come back – specifically.
Occasionally a novice high schooler
would come up to him afterwards
swept up in the emotion - not so much the words.
His style mimicked their high school writing
the unrequited love of the teenager
for the desk next door in English class.
Most gave up after two or three times,
or two or three months at the most –
some wondered why they even thought to come and read –
For each though, their precious symphony of words
composed for heartstrings
accomplished its purpose -
emotions now settled and merged into life’s existence.
But he –
he, never quit --
When he died his tombstone should have read:
“Here lies an Itinerant Poet.
He persevered.
His words comforted him.
He caressed them
as he slept the one last time.”
His daughter took the plastic sleeves,
placed them by the headstone,
put a small stone upon them,
covered them with leaves.
He as a bystander, would have written about her feelings.
Her touching sentimental acknowledgment
of these deep emotional companions - that spoke of him.
He would have wished though, they had at least made copies.
If he knew, he would have preferred they saved them -
even if it was in a dusty attic where no one
would find them except the moving company.
He would have chosen that a cleaning man
be the one to throw them away.
Now they belonged to the wind and the elements
-- as did he.
Ray Brown
http://apoetsdream.wordpress.com
Thanks so much for posting your poem, Ray! I think we've all seen that poet at readings. The idea of him wishing a cleaning man had been the one to throw the poems away stays with the reader. Thanks again.
ReplyDelete