a poetry manifesto

POETRY MAN, I FEST-O!
by alan.caudillo

I am NEW to poetry poetics prosody. Too new perhaps to
manifest any opinion about the ABSOLUTES of the word(s)
I know what I like, what moves me, tickles me, fills me with energy:
I like everything that I've read by Hafiz, his poems are full of life, love, God,
humor:

Now
That
All your worry
Has proved such an
Unlucrative
Business,
Why
Not
Find a better
Job

_____________________________________
FIRST TENET: All Poetry Should be Like Hafiz.
_____________________________________

And yet I like the poetry of e e cummings, the clever use of punctuation, the unordothodox context in rather orthodox form.
For instance,


may i move said he
is it love said she)
if you're willing said he
(but you're killing said she


but it's life said he
but your wife said she
now said he)
ow said she


Is both beautiful to read and also full of humor. But it is a far throw from Hafiz. For that matter, the poetry of Shel Silverstein was formative in my life:

If you had a giraffe,
and you stretched him another half,
you would have
A giraffe and a half.

____________________________________________________________________________________
SECOND TENET: If Poetry Is Not Like Hafiz, It Should At Least Resemble e e cummings (or Shel Silverstein).
____________________________________________________________________________________


My sense is, the boundaries for what Poetry can be have been pushed so far out as to be nonexistent.


My
sense
is,


the boundaries for
what Poetry
can be have been
pushed

so far
out as
to be nonexistent.


In many ways, that is what the last century (and the one before, to some extent) was all about, in all art forms, in science, in politics. We can toss out everything we know about the Universe if we can only get small enough (or close enough to something VERY MASSIVE). I think "HOWL" would have been an expression of Plato's reaction to the poem. When Stravinsky opened "The Rite of Spring" in 1913, the audience was so shocked by the departure from the norm ('My God, what has he done to that poor Bassoon?') that they rioted, tearing apart furniture and attacking the Composer. Where was the outrage when "Sunset Blvd" opened on Broadway (Besides me, I can't stand Sir Andrew. OK, Jesus Christ Superstar was fun, but come on).


_______________________________________________________________________________
THIRD TENET: There Are No Rules or Boundaries In Poetry, It Has All Been Done Before, And Better.
_______________________________________________________________________________

Maybe it's easier to talk about poetry by how it makes me feel. If Poetry is:
well written (Pound)
intelligent (Yeats)
emotive (Rumi)
inspirational (Lorca)
clever (Shakespeare)
devastating (Rimbaud)
sublime (WC Williams)
personal (Berrigan)
essential (Neruda)

then it is Poetry. If it is not, it still might be Poetry, just not good.

__________________________________________________________________________________________
FOURTH TENET: Some Poetry Is Better Than Others, I Am Willing To Be The Person Who Decides Which is Which.
__________________________________________________________________________________________

©2008 alan.caudillo

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