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Saturday, 22 September 2007

Poems Not To be Read Aloud: 5 -- by File

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[as usual, click on the picture to see a bigger version]

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15 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is only my second reading but I can already feel it growing on me. Is that photoshop, file?

Zephirine said...

Kinda beautiful, isn't it, I especially like the second 'side', lovely tribute to a son king...

Thank you so much for this series,File, they're quite fascinating and really expand ideas about what a poem is and what it can do.

file said...

Tony, enjoy! I used paint shop pro and ms publisher for this one

thanks for housing them Zeph, what is a poem and what can it do?

Zephirine said...

Well, it seems a poem can also be a set of instructions, a container, a list, a constellation or a nervous system, and it can warn, inform, amuse, confuse, sparkle, menace or shine...

or something like that.

guitougoal said...

file, zeph,
what a poem and what it can do:
Personally I have a simplistic definition: a poem is the expression of the poet's feelings-
what it can do:as the poet's language a poem is able to express his existence although it is not able to create it.
file, yours is a work of interrogation-with imagination.
question: is there a metaphysical order..1 to 5 ?

guitougoal said...

file
I should explain why the above question:
Biology and poetry ,or physiology with a poetic
language as per Orion or Poem 5, are they part of a method with a direction or they are not related?

Anonymous said...

I feel hampered in my reading and enjoyment of this because I can neither read it all on screen on one go or print it out satisfactorily. But with those restraints, I still find it gives me a warmth.

guitougoal said...

mimi,
did you click on the picture to enlarge it?

Anonymous said...

gui - of course I did, but the text is off on both sides of the screen, so a lot of scrolling required, and then not sure if I read the lines in the right order.

But it still made me feel warm.

file said...

thanks Z!!

G, there is no significance to the numbers, Zeph used them to title the pieces, when we start our world t-shirt and coaster domination I'll think again about the order, ok?

the central idea behind this is something like 'poetry trouve', as if we could have random encounters with poems on the sides of cracker boxes or at the end of a film, imagine flicking through a dry old anatomy book and stumbling across a poem?

It could be like discovering a feral child in your attic, realizing that he's been talking to you in your sleep, defining your dreams.

a voice you never knew was there, but who's voice? Who's speaking?

You know it's me, but is it? Are these biographical pieces or fiction?

'Poems not meant to be read aloud' or even found

perhaps being a little difficult to read is appropriate (sorry Mimi!), they're not meant to be read, but of course poetry is ...

that's why the sounds are in order, the meter and the words chosen for their music as well as their meaning as well as their shape and relationship to the visual and the conceptual

as G says "poems are the expression of feelings" but they are also the poets song

as to what a poem can do, I agree with Z, a poem can do whatever we can make it do, it can prop up table legs or end a movie

but even in imagined pieces it should never leave the heart of the poet, like Guitou says, that's it's anchor in truth, it has to be expression or it is nothing worthwhile (to me), my works are pale next to real poets but I'd argue that they never leave my heart

...and ninethely!! (a la Paterson, Zeph) poems should be self-serving, they should be memorable in some way, perhaps because they tap into the archetypes or because the music calls us back, or perhaps just because the perceptions are fresh, but part of a poems job is to wrap itself around the reader like a smelly fur coat

it's a bit hard to discuss pomes without talking bollocks isn't it?

Zephirine said...

A fine File manifesto there! Nominations for which poem most wraps around you like a smelly fur coat, anyone?

(I like the smell of fur coats myself, though not if they date back to the era of camphor mothballs)

Here's a link to a lecture by Don Paterson, which has been referred to a couple of times on here - a 'challenging' view of poetry and what it should do - makes you think though: 2004 TS Eliot lecture.

Anonymous said...

And good morning to you too, mon filou.

file said...

morning poly, have a nice ray now

Anonymous said...

Have a childhood aversion to the smell of mothballs, Zeph. Truly horrid, but agree that good fur smells delicious. Specially on a loved live creature!

file said...

good point mimitig