Friday, 03 April 2009

• THIS IS NOT A POEM

   

   

  This is not a poem

  A poem cannot exist on paper.  It is a song, a shout, a verbal expression.  When it is written down, it is something else: a set of instructions perhaps.  What are these linebreaks and spaces?  They are stage directions -- rules, skeletons even, but not life.  And poems that rely on visual presenation?  Poems that, without being triple spaced or strangely capitalized we would not  know they're poems?  Those are something else.  They are pictures, a drawing.  Maybe art, but not poetry.  Poetry is spoken, shouted, and sighed.  Until it reaches another's ears, it is only dead air escaping self-absorbed lungs. Or dead ink on dying fingers.  Touch it, fondle it, but do not raise it to your lips.  Insert metaphor here.  Inset cliche here.  Insert folk saying here, put just half of it in quotations to make it seem ironic.  Follow the meter then mess it up, just to prove you knew it was there.  Hide it in a book.  Print it on the page.  Put it in a box.  Keep it static, keep it safe.  Shove it up your ass, but keep it off your tongue.

                                                      

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