Poets & Poems (By Dennis L. Siluk)) Part I))[10/16/2006]


1) Anne Sexton: poems come from the abyss, painfully, and a life obviously as scornful; literary they could use some substance other than nakedness.

2) Howard Nemerov: good lyricism, one of the poets I ran after in my early days in college to read and try to understand. He writes well, yet I find there is usually something missing, perhaps they need to march to the end of the road (His poems).

3) Allen Ginsberg: when he was in his 20s, he wrote his best works, thereafter, he lost it to good taste, and good sense, which he had none of, and traded it for pleasure, and a warped mind, God help the reader.

4) E.E. Commings: Cummings poetry is Cummings! That is, more so than most poets; if you have read one of his poems, you’ve read most of them; a good and genuine poet indeed, perhaps uncompromising, but I get bored after a few of his poems, unfortunately.

5) Gary Snyder: Academic poetry, but in the middle (the beatnikism era): he hugs Zen as so many did back then; I was at the end of that era. He used his techniques correctly, for who he is (or was): sharp, clear and detached poetry.



Commentary on Poetry:
“Blessing of the Poem”:

There is nothing on earth that can equal the hard scraping profound labor and stirring of ones blood, and sense of sanctification that a good poem can offer.
That new promising poem, felt in the middle of silence, in the corner of the night, sticking to your mind and ribs until it finds its way out of your box and into the literature world; faint at first, then like the radiation of an atomic bomb.
The question asked: “Why indeed do people write poetry?”
A good question, and hard to answer, more subjective than otherwise, but let me give it a try, how I see it: imagines (dreams, seeing in your mind's eye, envisage), it is all under the same umbrella; such things come out of the unconscious, the mind, convicted, until written, then emancipated (and never to be lost in the vaults of humanity).