I need to add a whole other kind of consideration. If poetry were only an art form marked by restraint, musicality and rhythm I might not have bothered with it, but I was also attracted by characteristics I venerated in the works of greats like William Shakespeare, John Milton, William Wordsworth, John Keats, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost and many others.
I Will Mean
I write poetry because I believe that poetry is the best means to express convictions and belief. In this respect, I see poetry and religion as not wholly separate activities. It is what I meant when I elected to use the title “I Will Mean” for my first book of poetry. As a writer of poetry, I want my work to be significant for you and for me. By significant I mean that I am striving for a premonition of permanence, a feeling of concreteness, a sense of truth. Another way to look at it is that poetry is a means to use words to achieve a feeling of comfort with oneself and with one’s place in the stream of experience that is our totality.
The words “striving” and “arrive” are very telling in this case. I like to write poems that involve discovery, that involve bringing the reader/listener on a metaphorical voyage in which I and my reader/listener end up wiser than when we started out.
Too Quick With The Rules
When I was younger, I admit that I was capable of erring on the side of dogmatism. I was a bit too quick to impose rules in order to define what I meant by good and bad poetry. Now I would like what I am saying to be thought of as a personal aesthetic. This is what I am about when I write poetry, but I do not insist that anyone else adopt my principles. And, yes, as a reader of poetry I have found pleasure in works that I would not have written myself, works that adhere to a set of apparent principles that are not my own.
Art in general needs to be open, welcoming, accepting of diversity of points of view and methods. I believe that, and I am not comfortable setting myself up as some kind of czar of the right way to write.
Value “Reachingness”
Having said that, I do need to reaffirm at least one of my older principles. All that I ask of another poet is that you place a premium on what I call the “reachingness” of your work. If I am going to invest the time in reading and attempting to understand and appreciate your poetry, I need to have the sense that you meet me half way, that you care whether you reach me. If after reading your poem several times, nothing sticks, that is, I come away as confused as at the first reading, then I have to conclude that you failed, that it is not my problem as reader. It’s your problem as writer, that I wasted my time with your work.
Even our most prestigious literary publications have not always done a good job with their poetry. A case in point is The New Yorker. I have been a full time reader of this magazine for the last several years. During that time, I have been a dedicated reader of The New Yorker poetry and have usually felt that my time with these poems was very well spent. In recent years I think the poetry has been especially good—noticeably better than in the years before, no doubt owing to the ascendancy of a new editor-in-chief, David Remnick. That said, however, there are still exceptions.
Spy’s Clandestine Code
The exception in the latest issue is entitled “The Onion Poem” (The New Yorker, Dec. 24 & 31, 2007, p. 106). Nice title, yes? The title is the only good thing about this 18-line conglomeration arranged in nine sets of couplets. If there is anything to be derived from this mess, it will have to be explained in a prose paraphrase because the poem itself is a jumble of images that might work as provider of a spy’s clandestine code, but for nothing else.
I have to quickly add that this same issue includes two very fine poems by Grace Paley—“One Day” (page 84) and “Suddenly There’s Poughkeepsie” (page 116). I especially enjoyed the latter.
Time to put up or shut up. What contribution am I prepared to make to the fine art of poetry writing? Here’s a poem I recently completed entitled “The Great Unity.”
THE GREAT UNITY
Tick Tock, Tick Tock.
The clock marks the tightening of constraints.
Divided by the labels that organize.
Thoughts confined, stratified,
Day by day talking less to him and her.
Walls rise. The gulf adding to its size.
Tick Tock, Tick Tock.
Thoughts completed by their gaps.
And we become a Babel
of believers too committed for understanding,
partisans of the one true truth
that also excludes, ignores, denies.
Tick Tock, Tick Tock.
Life as the egg divider.
Everything in its compartment.
Everything has its place—
until lacking any superior vision
there is no chance for peace.
Tick Tock, Tick Tock.
Too much definition.
Too much separation. Too much wall.
And soon there is blood on those walls —
hatred, torture, slaughter of innocents,
anguish, the death of the young.
Tick Tock, Tick Tock.
Time to work for a reordering inside the head,
a relearning how to see and how to hear,
learning the sanctification of clarity,
learning comfort with the totality,
learning real love and the great unity,
the becoming one with the everyone, the all.
STEPHEN ALAN SAFT
For more on my writing including poetry, see these web sites: http://www.sasaftwrites.com
http://www.iwillmeanpoetry.com
Copyright © 2007 by Stephen Alan Saft
No comments:
Post a Comment