1. A poem is energy transferred from where the poet got it (he will have some several causations), by way of the poem itself to, all the way over to, the reader.
2. FORM IS NEVER MORE THAN AN EXTENSION OF CONTENT
3. ONE PERCEPTION MUST IMMEDIATELY AND DIRECTLY LEAD TO A FURTHER PERCEPTION
Energy always scares me. Poets aren’t electricians. Or even physicists. And I wonder whether Olson is traveling down a tube better left to atom smashers, not syllable crunchers. Five years into the atomic age and Charles is energy bound!
Physics tells me my desk consists of more open field than meaning. But I wouldn’t want a carpenter to build a quarky one for me. On the other hand, I’m staying open to the possibility that Mr. Olson is right, and the poem should consist of pure kinetics.
If that’s all there is, my friend, then let’s keep dancing.
Herodotus in America 1Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, it scans. Form is following the dance of history.
Water power falls from nowhere
special agents double oh
Oklahoma isn’t Lowell
where Jack was subterranean
but demon mills and there a dam
thing you can do about it. Progress
looms. The water wheel is parked
and happy as a Vegas night
out on the gasoline and fifth.
3 comments:
I've never quite understood scanning in poems (I know scanner hardware okay, and I knew what Spock meant when he scanned for lifeforms), but if it's bad that this poem scans, the poem iself is quite good. The sentence fragments really do lean into each other and create a whole.
I don't think it's bad that the poem scans (iambic tetrameter battling with trochaic tetrameter) but I think others would.
And thank you.
Now why did that post as anonymous I have no idea. But it was me.
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