Overhead
an arrow of wild geese
talks to itself.
Dean Blehert
dean@blehert.com
dblehert@verizon.net
Blogs:http://deanotations.blogspot.com (short poems)http://dearreader08.blogspot.com (essays and longer poems)WWW.BLEHERT.COM
Friday, February 6, 2009
A Comment on Comments on Poems
Someone recently asked why I write comments on the poems I post. Here's what I replied:
______________________________________
I comment on my own poems from time to time for the following reasons:
1. Because one isn't supposed to. It's part of the sacrosanct high priesthood of Poets. I try, in a poem, to say something of interest and, in a comment, to say something else of interest. To me the idea that a poet shouldn't comnent on his own work (and this IS a big taboo in certain circles) is something worth violating, as it implies that a poem is something other than live communication. It may be high quality live comm. (effective) and it may use certain conventions associated with poetry, but all this may be true of the comment as well.
2. Because, I'm of the "No Reader Left Behind" persuasion and have found, too often, that while some get it, some are left at sea.
I recognize that there's a down side to commenting: Sometimes, inadvertently, I limit the poem needlessly. Sometimes I insult the intelligence of those who get it. And sometimes, enjoying myself in my little riffs, I bore or overrun the reader. It's a trade-off.
My favorite comment on the relationship between the poem and the commentary is a brilliant and hilarious novel by Nabokov called PALE FIRE.
___________________________________________
I am also glad to explain my puns to people. When I know I have delivered a groaner, but someone didn't groan, I simply explain the pun and extract the groan, good as new, not at all dessicated by the explanation. I try to make my puns and my poems good enough to survive explanation. After all, I live in Virginia, a place full of ex-plantations. (That one is not good enough to explain. [A desert is an ex-plain.])
______________________________________
I comment on my own poems from time to time for the following reasons:
1. Because one isn't supposed to. It's part of the sacrosanct high priesthood of Poets. I try, in a poem, to say something of interest and, in a comment, to say something else of interest. To me the idea that a poet shouldn't comnent on his own work (and this IS a big taboo in certain circles) is something worth violating, as it implies that a poem is something other than live communication. It may be high quality live comm. (effective) and it may use certain conventions associated with poetry, but all this may be true of the comment as well.
2. Because, I'm of the "No Reader Left Behind" persuasion and have found, too often, that while some get it, some are left at sea.
I recognize that there's a down side to commenting: Sometimes, inadvertently, I limit the poem needlessly. Sometimes I insult the intelligence of those who get it. And sometimes, enjoying myself in my little riffs, I bore or overrun the reader. It's a trade-off.
My favorite comment on the relationship between the poem and the commentary is a brilliant and hilarious novel by Nabokov called PALE FIRE.
___________________________________________
I am also glad to explain my puns to people. When I know I have delivered a groaner, but someone didn't groan, I simply explain the pun and extract the groan, good as new, not at all dessicated by the explanation. I try to make my puns and my poems good enough to survive explanation. After all, I live in Virginia, a place full of ex-plantations. (That one is not good enough to explain. [A desert is an ex-plain.])
Thursday, February 5, 2009
What I Hope To Do
Not shock,
but teach gently
to connect.
[Note: Odd, since I recently wrote a long poem about the value of knowing how to disconnect, as well as connect, but when I wrote this, I was thinking mainly about a tendency in many poets of our time to value shock, and of critics and reviewers to praise literature for being shocking. The idea (similar to the psychiatric notion that shocking a brain is beneficial) seems to be that when people are petrified in some way, for example, stuck in unevaluated social values, it is an artist's job to jolt them out of their solidity--for example, use language that shocks, images that disgust, etc.
My own view is that heavy jolts shock a person out of one solidity into a new solidity that is usually denser than the original state, so that stronger and stronger shocks are needed, just as an addict needs larger and larger doses to get the high. I aim, not at shock, but at a recognition that is also a surprise, like the melody that, even as it surprises us in its twists, seems immediately inevitable, as if we'd known it all along.
Connect here could mean to connect with one another or simply to make connections, become aware of them. And a few zillion other things.]
MANY MORE OF MY POEMS AND ESSAYS AVAILABLE AT WWW.BLEHERT.COM. Site also has my wife's paintings and poems.
ALSO OTHERS OF MY ESSAYS AND LONGER POEMS ARE AT http://dearreader08.blogspot.com
MY WIFE WRITES ABOUT ART (HER OWN PAINTINGS AND ART TIPS, ETC.) AT http://dearartest.blogspot.com
We have various books and other products available. Info on request.
Dean Blehert
dean@blehert.com
dblehert@verizon.net
www.blehert.com
but teach gently
to connect.
[Note: Odd, since I recently wrote a long poem about the value of knowing how to disconnect, as well as connect, but when I wrote this, I was thinking mainly about a tendency in many poets of our time to value shock, and of critics and reviewers to praise literature for being shocking. The idea (similar to the psychiatric notion that shocking a brain is beneficial) seems to be that when people are petrified in some way, for example, stuck in unevaluated social values, it is an artist's job to jolt them out of their solidity--for example, use language that shocks, images that disgust, etc.
My own view is that heavy jolts shock a person out of one solidity into a new solidity that is usually denser than the original state, so that stronger and stronger shocks are needed, just as an addict needs larger and larger doses to get the high. I aim, not at shock, but at a recognition that is also a surprise, like the melody that, even as it surprises us in its twists, seems immediately inevitable, as if we'd known it all along.
Connect here could mean to connect with one another or simply to make connections, become aware of them. And a few zillion other things.]
MANY MORE OF MY POEMS AND ESSAYS AVAILABLE AT WWW.BLEHERT.COM. Site also has my wife's paintings and poems.
ALSO OTHERS OF MY ESSAYS AND LONGER POEMS ARE AT http://dearreader08.blogspot.com
MY WIFE WRITES ABOUT ART (HER OWN PAINTINGS AND ART TIPS, ETC.) AT http://dearartest.blogspot.com
We have various books and other products available. Info on request.
Dean Blehert
dean@blehert.com
dblehert@verizon.net
www.blehert.com
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
CLINGING
Though they pressed tightly against each other,
love found a gap and leaked away.
Love goes without saying, even
without sighing. Everything else
oozed away, pleasure, excitement, even
at last clotted boredom--it all went
without saying--until, stuck together
by the vacuum between them, in silence
they became inseparable.
[Note: Not intended to be a criticism of love, but a description of one way to fail to create it, while mimicking it, the uniting, not of mutual admiration, but of mutual need for it. That's not a new idea. Perhaps this metaphor for it (the pressure of clinging pressing out love as if squeezing moisture from a sponge) is a new look at it. (Probably not!) The old idiom of things going without saying, here becomes the silence as love gradually vanishes, perhaps not noticed until long after there's nothing there. Of course, love doesn't vanish. It simply stops being created. And in this case, it was badly alloyed with need to begin with. Reminds me of an old song, CLING CLING CLING off my trolley.... ("Clang Clang Clang goes the trolley...")]
Dean Blehert
dean@blehert.com
dblehert@verizon.net
love found a gap and leaked away.
Love goes without saying, even
without sighing. Everything else
oozed away, pleasure, excitement, even
at last clotted boredom--it all went
without saying--until, stuck together
by the vacuum between them, in silence
they became inseparable.
[Note: Not intended to be a criticism of love, but a description of one way to fail to create it, while mimicking it, the uniting, not of mutual admiration, but of mutual need for it. That's not a new idea. Perhaps this metaphor for it (the pressure of clinging pressing out love as if squeezing moisture from a sponge) is a new look at it. (Probably not!) The old idiom of things going without saying, here becomes the silence as love gradually vanishes, perhaps not noticed until long after there's nothing there. Of course, love doesn't vanish. It simply stops being created. And in this case, it was badly alloyed with need to begin with. Reminds me of an old song, CLING CLING CLING off my trolley.... ("Clang Clang Clang goes the trolley...")]
Dean Blehert
dean@blehert.com
dblehert@verizon.net
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
THE WITHHOLDING TAX
What we mustn't say taxes our vitality:
It's all the withholding that makes it hard
to live on the wages of sin.
Dean Blehert
dean@blehert.com
dblehert@verizon.net
www.blehert.com
It's all the withholding that makes it hard
to live on the wages of sin.
Dean Blehert
dean@blehert.com
dblehert@verizon.net
www.blehert.com
Monday, February 2, 2009
The Most Inscrutable One Wins!
Across the table you slowly smile.
What now must I pretend to know?
Note: Perhaps you've met such a person? The one I have in mind was not only conversation-killingly inscrutable, but delivered whole profound dramas that only he could follow. In the midst of discussion, he'd drift away, working his lips and frowning, then smile like the coming of a new dawn, then say nothing or say things like "YES!" But "Yes WHAT?"
And I, having been flattered enough by his saying or hinting that I understood things better than most and having foolishly indulged in joining him in being critical of the superficiality of mutual acquaintances, would be trapped in these self-serving agreements, so couldn't be too insistent on learning what the smile was about. I had to "just know." Or, asking, I'd get the start of an inarticulate statement that would be interrupted, first by his saying, "Well, it's complicated" and soon after by something like this: "You see, it's...no, I don't like putting it that way...on second thought, I'm not happy with that...hmmm...AH! Yes, that's better...no, that's not quite it...".
To make things more difficult, this person could be charming, could even make fun of himself, and occasionally he did say things worth hearing--bait for his traps? Or maybe I put the traps there for myself because I wanted to imagine him brighter than he was.
I wonder how much of my attention and intelligence is STILL stuck in those long-ago conversations, waiting for an explanation that will never come.
Dean Blehert
dean@blehert.com
dblehert@verizon.net
www.blehert.com
What now must I pretend to know?
Note: Perhaps you've met such a person? The one I have in mind was not only conversation-killingly inscrutable, but delivered whole profound dramas that only he could follow. In the midst of discussion, he'd drift away, working his lips and frowning, then smile like the coming of a new dawn, then say nothing or say things like "YES!" But "Yes WHAT?"
And I, having been flattered enough by his saying or hinting that I understood things better than most and having foolishly indulged in joining him in being critical of the superficiality of mutual acquaintances, would be trapped in these self-serving agreements, so couldn't be too insistent on learning what the smile was about. I had to "just know." Or, asking, I'd get the start of an inarticulate statement that would be interrupted, first by his saying, "Well, it's complicated" and soon after by something like this: "You see, it's...no, I don't like putting it that way...on second thought, I'm not happy with that...hmmm...AH! Yes, that's better...no, that's not quite it...".
To make things more difficult, this person could be charming, could even make fun of himself, and occasionally he did say things worth hearing--bait for his traps? Or maybe I put the traps there for myself because I wanted to imagine him brighter than he was.
I wonder how much of my attention and intelligence is STILL stuck in those long-ago conversations, waiting for an explanation that will never come.
Dean Blehert
dean@blehert.com
dblehert@verizon.net
www.blehert.com
Sunday, February 1, 2009
THE WIND'S TANTRUM
Wind slams the screen door--
must have had a bad day
puffing to bend down tall grass
that kept standing up again.
Note: I missed a chance for a better title. Suppose I had the wind in a bad mood because of attempts all day to disrupt overly gelled and conditioned hairdos that resisted being wind-mussed. Frustrating! I could have called it BAD HAIR DAY. But whole fields of rebellious grass, refusing to remain bowed down , will do. No wonder we have hurricanes that rip out whole trees. The wind has to work off all that frustration.
Lots more poetry at www.blehert.com
Longer poems and essays at http://dearreader08.blogspot.com
must have had a bad day
puffing to bend down tall grass
that kept standing up again.
Note: I missed a chance for a better title. Suppose I had the wind in a bad mood because of attempts all day to disrupt overly gelled and conditioned hairdos that resisted being wind-mussed. Frustrating! I could have called it BAD HAIR DAY. But whole fields of rebellious grass, refusing to remain bowed down , will do. No wonder we have hurricanes that rip out whole trees. The wind has to work off all that frustration.
Lots more poetry at www.blehert.com
Longer poems and essays at http://dearreader08.blogspot.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
