Poetry
I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond allthis fiddle.Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, onediscovers init after all, a place for the genuine.Hands that can grasp, eyesthat can dilate, hair that can riseif it must, these things are important not because ahigh-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but becausethey areuseful. When they become so derivative as to becomeunintelligible,the same thing may be said for all of us, that wedo not admire whatwe cannot understand: the batholding on upside down or in quest of something toeat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless wolfundera tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse thatfeels aflea, the base-ball fan, the statistician–nor is it validto discriminate against ‘business documents andschool-books’; all these phenomena are important. One mustmake a distinctionhowever: when dragged into prominence by half poets, theresult is not poetry,nor till the poets among us can be’literalists ofthe imagination’–aboveinsolence and triviality and can presentfor inspection, ‘imaginary gardens with real toads in them’, shallwe haveit. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,the raw material of poetry inall its rawness andthat which is on the other handgenuine, you are interested in poetry.
It was weird to read the first line and see a poet say they don’t like poetry. But as she continued to write, I realized that she was talking more about the ambiguity of poetry. When you “cant admire what we don’t understand.” It’s so frustrating looking at poetry and searching for a meaning that is out of your grasp. I loved the idea of the raw genuine poem she talks about, however. Because if you go at it deep enough you will feel genuine senses; grasping hands, dialating eyes, raising hair. These things let us know what we feel is real, and maybe we can go from there to discover how the poem means.
Kate's Bloggypoo 