On Disliking Poetry
Reading through the article, a question came to me: how important was poetry in my development? Did it modify my mental model at all? My first instinctive answers were: 1) not important, and 2) very little.
Let me expand on that a bit more. I actually took a poetry class in college, but in terms of shaping my thoughts it was overshadowed completely by other things. To name just a few of what those other things were: comparative lit, critical theory, analysis, modern and contemporary Chinese film and literature.
In the normal course of life encounters with poetry, I once purchased a book of poetry back in college. The book was unrelated to any class. I remember flipping through a few pages then promptly went back to reading the LRB; it was long form essays that modified my beliefs more than anything else, then or now.
Searching through my blog archives, I can count a relatively few, but not unimportant instances, in which I noted down poetry. Reading through the list of poems [1] again, I tried to pin down what significance poetry might been of to me: poetry functioned as a heuristic for feelings/sentiments. Longing, love, loneliness, sorrow: feelings in all their permutations mapped to a singular expression, if only for a few moments and within a few words.
In exploring and expressing more complicated ideas, it is not clear whether poetry is the proper function. Unless it is relaying an idea so permeated that poetry loses its evocativeness.
[1]:
Let go your earthly tether
On and on the Great River rolls, racing east. Of proud and gallant heroes its white-tops leave no trace, As right and wrong, pride and fall turn all at once unreal.
And you are as God made you, beautiful; And you are as God made you, unexpected"
In dreadful deeds fearless
Recital is the unsophisticated assassination of poetry
Inviting Writers to Drink
Drunk in Autumn Woods
Erinnerung an die Marie A.
Sorrowing, as water streams without interruption
I offer something more with these thoughts, which only you will notice.
Sorrow is hushed into peace in my heart like the evening among the silent trees
"Then Amnon... said to her, 'Get up and get out!'"
