A Thought, Of A Sudden
I think perhaps one of the reasons that I struggle to relate with poetry in general is because I struggle to relate to modern poetry in particular, and the reason for that, it just occurred to me, funnily enough, is the lack of rhyming.
Well, not the lack of rhyming per se. The absence of requirement for, or expectation of, some kind of externally imposed metrical or phonetic structure for the poem, which then naturally falls into the distinct lines of poetry, makes the whole line break thing seem rather precious, to me. I've read very little modern poetry that I thought did anything particularly interesting or useful with the convention of the linebreak (let's be fair, I've also in the scheme of things read very little modern poetry, though of course it depends on to whom I'm being compared), and I'd rather just see little evocative prose paragraphs presented as artworks which in my mind (not the mind of the artist, so who'm I to say? and judge?) are more representative of the true nature and form of what's being produced and presented. Maybe what I'm saying is sort of like: "look, if you're going to blow skronky atonal free saxophone solos, it's probably not necessary to do it in fixed 32-bar intervals, because they don't mean anything in the context of what you're doing."
Or I'm just being a wanker.
(Since I don't much anticipate writing a great deal about poetry, I'm going to apologetically stuff this one under my rarely-utilized "Fiction" tag. Sorry, poetry.)
Well, not the lack of rhyming per se. The absence of requirement for, or expectation of, some kind of externally imposed metrical or phonetic structure for the poem, which then naturally falls into the distinct lines of poetry, makes the whole line break thing seem rather precious, to me. I've read very little modern poetry that I thought did anything particularly interesting or useful with the convention of the linebreak (let's be fair, I've also in the scheme of things read very little modern poetry, though of course it depends on to whom I'm being compared), and I'd rather just see little evocative prose paragraphs presented as artworks which in my mind (not the mind of the artist, so who'm I to say? and judge?) are more representative of the true nature and form of what's being produced and presented. Maybe what I'm saying is sort of like: "look, if you're going to blow skronky atonal free saxophone solos, it's probably not necessary to do it in fixed 32-bar intervals, because they don't mean anything in the context of what you're doing."
Or I'm just being a wanker.
(Since I don't much anticipate writing a great deal about poetry, I'm going to apologetically stuff this one under my rarely-utilized "Fiction" tag. Sorry, poetry.)
Labels: Fiction
posted by medrawt at
20:34
