Humanyms

Meme Me Up Poetically

I was tagged by Robert and I’ll tag Amanda (at one of her blogs or another), Colleen and mompoet. Anyone else who would like, can jump in. A list of who has participated is at Cam’s.

The first poem I remember reading/hearing/reacting to was… I Think Mice Are Rather Nice by Rose Fyleman when I was very small, perhaps grade 2, having read it from the Norton Anthology I had at home. (I read before I started school.)

I was forced to memorize numerous poems in school and… numerous here is defined as three times. In primary school, I got to choose so I picked that mouse one. (In a world of mousetraps and vermin references, I back the little guy. I also have a fondness for snakes and cockroaches.)

The second for rote was to be a choice from Shakespeare so I picked Hamlet’s witches chant and for the third, I picked Edna St. Vincent Millay’s, Dirge without Music. Which I enjoyed but it’s like a friend described… she went to see an apocalyptic movie which she found fun and relaxing and scary and it was good “because it was scarier than she was”.

(buzzblinkbuzz: Last coin tangent warning)

At some point I suppose delving into depressing stuff more teaches, affirms, closes the feedback loop but for bursts, it’s like indulging in camp, like an over the top song, worm song or Hank William Sr’s Long Gone Lonesome Blues.

(neeroneEERO. blip. Time up. Next question)

But —

(Klaxons. The format does not allow it. Proceed to next question.)

I read poetry because… sometimes, in a sort of lottery chance, my mind is blown, expanded, thrown into another loop of rhythm…A lot of prose moves slower than my brain can go.

Besides poetry’s waaaaay shorter than novels plus you can skip ahead and not miss the plot.

A poem I’m likely to think about when asked about a favorite poem is… a toughie. I like the rhythms, process, experience, excess, message to inspire …hm…Desiderata is a touchstone. Not terribly literary, perhaps plebeian, but useful.

There’s a couple I’d like to put on the workbench and disassemble iamb for iamb and see how they work. Basically any poem that has a sense of humor that can make me laugh is high on the gold scale these days.

I write poetry, but… most don’t put poet on their business cards like I did the last time I had business cards. That fire-started some conversations from all these closeted poets. We’re more surrounded by them or by air, I don’t know. (I also had editor on that card.)

My experience with reading poetry differs from my experience with reading other types of literature because… with fiction, once I know the punchline, the suspense is rather flat. The surprises are structural and pragmatic to move the plot while with poetry the twists and turns are more aesthetics and play than a corralling of a reader down the thought path.

Maybe I’m comparing apples to oranges. The film Filantropica keeps revealing itself more after the movie ends and would bear rewatching and it is basically long fiction like a novel. Perhaps I tend to bumbled onto low quality fiction, and high quality poetry and my preference is just happenstance.

I find poetry… everywhere from the darndest things, I’m told. It makes sense — if something can be conceived, perceived or half way communicated, it can be poemized. (Or should that be enpoemated?)

The last time I heard poetry was… , when I first looked this over was Donald Halls’ To a Waterfowl but since then we had the pleasure to hear Jeff Cottrill perform so many humorous satire pieces at Dusty Owl.

He has a CD (Cracktastic!) so he may also be the next time I hear poetry as well. It won’t be the same without the visuals of Othello played in two parts, by him and by his frog hand puppet but lots of other good routines on there.

Make your own mystery Answer A:
I think poetry is like…, you know, good. Most of the time. Except when it’s not. At least not for someone. It’s like a shoe. Not like in the 1400s when there was no left or right shoes. A perfect shoe now.

Make your own mystery Answer B:
I think poetry is like… a goddess created and moulded into the image of the viewer’s dreams. If the person is atheist and doesn’t believe in poetry, they are still tethered into a dysfunctional dynamic embedded in a society that deifies and defiles and antagonizes itself with its own inner and outer wrestling with the Word.

(bzzZZZzzt. And we’re outta time. Join us next time when we meme music.)