| The GLP Project: What is Poetry? |
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My message insists that poetry has no communion with prose. Any similarities between the uses of poetry and prose indicate a misuse of both. If they share common words on a page, it is only a technical accident. A prose sentence is the sum of its parts (i.e., the total sum of functional dictionary meanings added together). The honor of prose is reliability. Poetry is an unaccounted for event. Prose is always a list of successive ideas led by some chronology - or some misuse of chronology. Poetry seeks to be more than the sum of its parts; it has no dependence on chronology. Poetry seeks to become Monad - the representation of entire life (or life experience) in one symbol (phrase, line). Because poetry must always seek to become incantation or Monad - it must practice the unaccountable. If we are not discussing the "unknown quantity" in literature, then we do not concern ourselves with poetry. We do not say that prose cannot discuss fundamental realities, we only insist poetry approaches human concerns with different powers and quantities. The honor of poetry is the sudden arrival of the strange. Poetry is identity found in the unaccountable. Modern Poetry is not poetry as we have bumped against it. Above all else, we complain about the misuse of language in the experimental years. Common usage language can be charged with the most mysterious and powerful effects in the hands of poets. There is no necessity or obligation to use rhetorical tricks, rhymes, or confused grammars to stand apart as powerful poems. Since poetry is never the sum of its parts, we say that it cannot be translated or abridged. Poetry seeks to become Monad. It's a once for all time event in the language. A Monad lessened by on e of its parts, falls dead. But modern poetry can be easily translated because it operates as prose, and, like prose, has a word for word representation. Modern poetry, even so much as it hopes to be clever,still remains the sum of its parts. Prose in, prose out. Poetry is an event; unaccounted for and strange. If a poem has not failed somewhere in its presentation, you will always remember where you were when you first encountered it. A line of poetry represents - in one moment of consciousness - many layers of ideation; never a predicted representation, but recognized when seen. Poetry is never the sum of its parts. It will never reveal to you what it has just done to you. Poetry is a rabid bite, quickly leading down rabbit holes existing at the beginning of our creation. Poetry is never perfectly clear, but always necessary for clear living. Next, Become one of the Greatest Living Poets Home
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