Craggy Shores & A Lighthouse

Remember Aristotle's doctrine of the mean? Or Hegel's thesis, -thesis, -thesis? (sic) Instead of remembering them, I bet you're wondering, what good news could possibly follow? -- so I'll spread the gospel without delay.

I've read quite a few poems, enough to be bothered by them. Take your average poem published in The New Yorker: loose. Written in modes the not-so-distant cousins of 'so I was at work today when...', jazzed up with cosmopolitan virtues and references like nigiri toro. That's how they strike me. Now take your average poem from a reputable literary journal (pardon the dint of irresponsibly broad generalization: acknowledged): labored. Full of falsehoods -- some call it license but I prefer to call it ignorance -- and worse, full of shabby metaphysics. I mean shabby. And for the cherry on top, some of these poems are written in formal rhyme and meter which in all but the most capable hands makes them wilt.

So that's pretty harsh. If I were ever commissioned to express these opinions in an essay or interview, I'd have to clean them up a bit. But the core concern is there: So many poems seem lost to me, close to one or the other of two craggy shores, loose and labored. Barely disguised, flaccid, overly self-interested autobiography, or a whole lotta nuttin worked and reworked and reworked and worked to sound like a little sum'in. Sometimes and far too often, both, and not in the way Hegelstotle was getting at.

A quote comes to mind: "In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite." (Said by none other than Paul Dirac, whose discoveries in quantum physics came so fast and cut so deep that many wondered -- some still wonder -- whether they were idiosyncratic inventions that just happened to correspond with reality. Some irony there.)

Every poet worth his pony should be haunted by that quote. Seems to me, few, so few, seem to be.

**Update**

Speak of the devil and the devil delivers: The February 19 & 26 issue of The New Yorker contained three poems and two of them brought me to tears. One brought tears of sadness, and the other tears of joy and sadness mixed -- wistfulness, like. Gorgeous, both. A birthday gift I didn't see coming, and my best. (Although that radio-controlled dragonfly was pretty cool...)