Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.61.0410070204550.28244@panix2.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>,
"WRYTING-L : Writing and Theory across Disciplines" <WRYTING-L@LISTSERV.UTORONTO.CA>
Subject: the uselessness of poems
Date: Thu, 7 Oct 2004 02:05:08 -0400 (EDT)
the uselessness of poems why would one write a poem . in a poem statements are not to be taken at face value . everything is excused . metaphors are always broken . the tropes are torpor describe millennia ago . abstraction and codework or oulipo tricks are those of dying form . to bear witness implies the necessity of clear speech . the language is already debased . nothing will bring it back and we all know about the problematic of origins . nothing stops the devolution of an increasingly minor art . there is no reason whatsoever to teach poetry in the school system . today the average nursery-rhyme, already antiquated, says more about culture and cultural context than any contemporary poet . poetics is the last refuge of the damned, always involved in recuperation . the code-forms of traditional poetry are permanently lost in the virtual digital and dawning world . statements in poems are always already hyperbole . to speak to each other is to speak to no one . the poetry slam at least has the virtue of contestation . poems are fearful of the world . the contemporary world is all we have . the last place one looks for testimony is the poem . the poetry of previous centuries envelops us like good late-night television . the condensation of kennings and waka is destroyed by the infinity of digital type . poet on one hand, rockhop on the other as we go out singing . don't mistake content . cleverness is the last refuge of the poet . happy poems make good times of us all . what at this point is the point of searching for the word . i begin to write a poem: i sit at a tablet in a certain position . language swirls in the absence of content . the world demands nothing of the poet . writers, no readers . with charm the poet fools the poet . the crashed world . we are our own victims of surplus . we are our own surplus victims . __