Attitude and Meaning in Poetry
I know I keep saying I don’t like to do articles on poetry, but I do, maybe because of all the writing in the world out there, I respect poetry above all the rest.
My wife was looking over a poem of mine today, translating it actually into Spanish, and she said, “You put a noun where a verb belongs, and if you put another verb in, it will be two in the same sentence. And I said, it is not a sentence, it is a line within a stanza, and it compliments the direct object. To be honest with myself, I really couldn’t find the word I wanted so I made up the word to be presented as a plural adjective so I could push in what I wanted to end the line.
Then I said to myself: she is trying to help, and it makes more sense to her (not to me), so I looked at the whole poem, and figured if I had to change that one word, I’d have to change the whole poem, the whole two stanzas, 10-lines. You can’t write a poem, no more than you can order creativeness, it doesn’t happen that way. So I said, let me look, and see if there is something in this poem beyond the word that can save the day. And I restructured the whole poem, and created a deeper meaning than what I wanted—but was happier with it, and left the word completely out, and my wife fell to sleep in the chair. I wanted to show her my accomplishment; I mean I had to stop everything in my life to ponder on this, to see if I really wanted to change it. I think I did it for her.
Right or wrong, it doesn’t matter, what does, is approach, or attitude; now let me start all over again.
I have four corners to my world, north, south, east and west, better put, God, myself, my wife and poetry.
First thing I’ve realized long ago in poetry was this—you take out of poets or poetry what you like, throwing the rest away. Good or bad, if it’s not for you, then why force-feed yourself. Thus, if you like what someone teaches you, it is good for you, if not, why argue about something or someone who is not for you. If you don’t like what I say, don’t read me. If you do, then fine; don’t conform to music that sickens you; that way you can keep a good attitude. When Elvis was making a record, if someone was in the area that bothered him, he’d stop the production and leave. It makes good sense, you cannot be creative with a bug in the nose, and that is why he was good, or perhaps one reason.
I was going to give a long example of an event that took place back in l985, when the Ronald McDonald House of St. Paul, invited me to a presentation, but I will make it shorter than what I intended to. Anyhow, in the process of me attending the presentation, they had asked me to do a small story, as the one I had done, “The Tale of: Willie the Humpback Whale,” back in l981. Well I did, but it wasn’t finished, yet I brought it along, was going to give it to the officials, for review. During the presentation, one of the officials looked it over, said something like this: if only you could take the rhyme schema out, and change the subject from turtle to a human being, and so for the and so on.
He was rude and demanding and I could go on, but I said: “You know what you want, go get it,” and I got up and walked out. They didn’t need me or want me as far as my creativeness went, and had told me over the phone, they didn’t know what they wanted, but I guess found out what they didn’t want. So instead of me trying to pretend, and fit in, I didn’t want to waste my time or theirs. If I lost anything, it was perhaps a potential future with an ongoing who knows what: I mean I was volunteering my services.
Anyhow, the one book I had done on the whale went up for a Pulitzer Prize, and I got a nice letter back, but not the Prize.
[Meaning of a Poem] Sometimes the poet gets lost and doesn’t’ even know his subject himself, or so I’ve noticed in much poetry I’ve read. Most of us think it is in the title of the poem, but could be to the contrary.
The problem comes not when he finishes up on a subject per se, but when he hobbles on, when he has already named it. It’s kind of like sitting down with an old friend and running out of things to say, thus, you grab whatever pops up in your mind: this creates in the reader confusion. If it is said, leave it alone, we don’t need to pound a person with it. Faulkner does that sometimes, and it irritates me, but he does it for his own reasons: he gets lost also, so do not stop writing if you are…just slow down.
—I hate to say this, but I will: arrogance is good, a little good in poetry—in a poem, if done right, just so you don’t take it to heart, and display it outside of the stanzas. What I write, I write because I want it there, usually, and I like a lot of imagination tucked in the corners. And thus, attitude and meaning are important ingredients in a poem; the reader can see it, feel it. The reader is no dummy, they may not write it, but they know it. Sometimes they are the better poets, not because they wish to write it, but because they love it, and those are often the ones who appreciate it more, and don’t like it mopped around on the floor; they have a good inner eye; we poets, are perhaps the ones with the eccentric eye, somewhere in the back of our minds trying to unveil the monster.
—Let’s see if I can say this right: never write a poem that should have been written because someone told you they wanted to hear it, write it because it should be, perhaps, and it is something you overlooked, and would have done, but not directed to do in particular, you lose the creative touch; or at least I do, and the meaning of the poem becomes stale.
I know I keep saying I don’t like to do articles on poetry, but I do, maybe because of all the writing in the world out there, I respect poetry above all the rest.
My wife was looking over a poem of mine today, translating it actually into Spanish, and she said, “You put a noun where a verb belongs, and if you put another verb in, it will be two in the same sentence. And I said, it is not a sentence, it is a line within a stanza, and it compliments the direct object. To be honest with myself, I really couldn’t find the word I wanted so I made up the word to be presented as a plural adjective so I could push in what I wanted to end the line.
Then I said to myself: she is trying to help, and it makes more sense to her (not to me), so I looked at the whole poem, and figured if I had to change that one word, I’d have to change the whole poem, the whole two stanzas, 10-lines. You can’t write a poem, no more than you can order creativeness, it doesn’t happen that way. So I said, let me look, and see if there is something in this poem beyond the word that can save the day. And I restructured the whole poem, and created a deeper meaning than what I wanted—but was happier with it, and left the word completely out, and my wife fell to sleep in the chair. I wanted to show her my accomplishment; I mean I had to stop everything in my life to ponder on this, to see if I really wanted to change it. I think I did it for her.
Right or wrong, it doesn’t matter, what does, is approach, or attitude; now let me start all over again.
I have four corners to my world, north, south, east and west, better put, God, myself, my wife and poetry.
First thing I’ve realized long ago in poetry was this—you take out of poets or poetry what you like, throwing the rest away. Good or bad, if it’s not for you, then why force-feed yourself. Thus, if you like what someone teaches you, it is good for you, if not, why argue about something or someone who is not for you. If you don’t like what I say, don’t read me. If you do, then fine; don’t conform to music that sickens you; that way you can keep a good attitude. When Elvis was making a record, if someone was in the area that bothered him, he’d stop the production and leave. It makes good sense, you cannot be creative with a bug in the nose, and that is why he was good, or perhaps one reason.
I was going to give a long example of an event that took place back in l985, when the Ronald McDonald House of St. Paul, invited me to a presentation, but I will make it shorter than what I intended to. Anyhow, in the process of me attending the presentation, they had asked me to do a small story, as the one I had done, “The Tale of: Willie the Humpback Whale,” back in l981. Well I did, but it wasn’t finished, yet I brought it along, was going to give it to the officials, for review. During the presentation, one of the officials looked it over, said something like this: if only you could take the rhyme schema out, and change the subject from turtle to a human being, and so for the and so on.
He was rude and demanding and I could go on, but I said: “You know what you want, go get it,” and I got up and walked out. They didn’t need me or want me as far as my creativeness went, and had told me over the phone, they didn’t know what they wanted, but I guess found out what they didn’t want. So instead of me trying to pretend, and fit in, I didn’t want to waste my time or theirs. If I lost anything, it was perhaps a potential future with an ongoing who knows what: I mean I was volunteering my services.
Anyhow, the one book I had done on the whale went up for a Pulitzer Prize, and I got a nice letter back, but not the Prize.
[Meaning of a Poem] Sometimes the poet gets lost and doesn’t’ even know his subject himself, or so I’ve noticed in much poetry I’ve read. Most of us think it is in the title of the poem, but could be to the contrary.
The problem comes not when he finishes up on a subject per se, but when he hobbles on, when he has already named it. It’s kind of like sitting down with an old friend and running out of things to say, thus, you grab whatever pops up in your mind: this creates in the reader confusion. If it is said, leave it alone, we don’t need to pound a person with it. Faulkner does that sometimes, and it irritates me, but he does it for his own reasons: he gets lost also, so do not stop writing if you are…just slow down.
—I hate to say this, but I will: arrogance is good, a little good in poetry—in a poem, if done right, just so you don’t take it to heart, and display it outside of the stanzas. What I write, I write because I want it there, usually, and I like a lot of imagination tucked in the corners. And thus, attitude and meaning are important ingredients in a poem; the reader can see it, feel it. The reader is no dummy, they may not write it, but they know it. Sometimes they are the better poets, not because they wish to write it, but because they love it, and those are often the ones who appreciate it more, and don’t like it mopped around on the floor; they have a good inner eye; we poets, are perhaps the ones with the eccentric eye, somewhere in the back of our minds trying to unveil the monster.
—Let’s see if I can say this right: never write a poem that should have been written because someone told you they wanted to hear it, write it because it should be, perhaps, and it is something you overlooked, and would have done, but not directed to do in particular, you lose the creative touch; or at least I do, and the meaning of the poem becomes stale.
posted by Dennis and Rosa Siluk at 5:39 PM
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