[lit-ideas] Re: Poem For Your Consideration
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2011 09:54:10 +0100 (BST)
Thanks to John too for his response: the tone of that last "Hurrah" is the key,
but what is that? What is that? And that is what? That is what? Hmm? But David
reports
"On Jun 4, 2011, at 4:46 AM, Donal McEvoy wrote:
Death and unhappiness
will come. But also happiness. See."
These words are not mine (nor even are they a from a fortune cookie), but are
the concluding words of the poem, which like the rest of it [in my clear and
present opinion] do not bear much examinination. It does the opposite of a
great poem and gets worse, not better, with each reading. As it is often easier
to explain why any work of art falls short than to explain exactly why it
succeeds, its main value is perhaps as an object lesson in ways and means to
produce duff poetry, starting with using the poem the 'discuss' ideas you do
not grasp properly and on which you have nothing interesting (or even coherent)
to say. I judge fair. See.
If a gun were held to my head to speak positively, I might refer to "Look" as a
bravura performance [as with any poem so bad no one else could aspire to
produce it], full of kinetic energy [it jumps about a lot], fascinatingly
eclectic and wide-ranging [it drops a lot of names ("Kant...Mao" - FFS)] and on
a theme that is as profoundly important as it is eternally relevant [whatever
the theme is, something to do with 'looking' and 'seeing' anyhow, and they are
surely profoundly important and eternally relevant].
From the briefest on-line search of the work of the judge who found the poem
"extraordinary" and "wise", this (assuming the published work was not merely to
fulfill a contractual obligation) is also his idea of good-enough-to-publish
poetry:
"This is the city. The city you know. The city you have always known.
The dark has been dispelled. At night the city’s domed with noxious light,
a patient smothering of its own free will beneath a toxic tent.
By day it’s bedlam. Even the indolent lilies of the field
are toiling and spinning as if there were no tomorrow. This is the city."
The above is from a poem that apparently then concludes:
"For she is philosophy drawn from examples.
For she surprises by a fine excess, and not by singularity.
For she is a circle whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is
nowhere.
For she is everything that is the case.
For she is the fulfilling of the law.
For she too is in Arcadia.
For she is the empress of ice-cream."
You couldn't make it up. Well, uh, someone did.
Donal
London
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