All Things in Moderation

Some further revelations I've had in regards to "the discussion of poetry" and such:

Recently my poetry workshop was visited by a very talented young poet, whose work I sincerely enjoy and appreciate. Nevertheless, as she led the class discussion, I repeatedly found myself completely lost to what in God's name she was talking about while most of the class nodded in agreement and seemed perfectly in sync with where this woman was going. I was just afraid she'd ask my opinion on the matter and I'd be found out! But I think... just as there are different types of poets (call them schools, whatever) perhaps there are different ideologies as to approaching poetry. I'm not sure where I fit in, but I will say that there seem to be two extremes. There's the highly analytical approach, in which the sole purpose is extracting "meaning" from a poem, which is silly (William Carlos Williams would whoop ya for doin' so) because there is more to a poem than just theme. After all, poetry is both narrative and the exploration of words in relation to the world. On the other hand, there are those who talk about poetry in almost laughably convoluted terms, and while I cringe at the analytical method I am simply baffled by this style of reading.

I belong somewhere in the middle on this spectrum. In reality, my approach to poetry is similar to my approach to discussion of other disciplines: history, anthropology, sociology, etc. You can talk about the negotiation of gender hierarchy the same way you talk about the implications of gender within a poem. Or the creation of nationalism in the same way a poem might talk about one's relationship to a geographical space, a community, the idea of family. There are inherent human experiences that the humanities seem to overlook, or perhaps overlook the importance that these things are happening across the board. Doesn't the fact that it's is happening somewhere else in the world or that it has happened in the past make our experiences now only more rich and true and meaningful? I wrote a poem based on this documentary (Wildflowers) about the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. The film showed these Lebanese women mourning for their imprisoned men and the violence surrounding them enacted by the soldiers. The agony on their faces had startling similarity to Picasso's Guernica, the most pure form of pain and sorrow and suffering displayed in two different art forms but essentially it is all real and similar experience. In a similar fashion, Jonathan Safran Foer does a comparative exploration of 9/11 and the bombing of Dresden in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.

So maybe this post has become more a discussion of my approach to writing poetry than talking about poetry. But really what I mean by all these global references is that poetry is not all spacey talk of ethereal crap nor is it a formula. When we talk about poetry, there needs to be something concrete that grounds us. Whether it's actually talking about the words on the page or the ideas behind them, let's keep our feet on the ground and our heads out of them clouds, okay people? At the same time, poetry is mystery, it is veiled and there is something sacred about exploring the sacred. I just need to find some like-minded people who share my appreciation of the middle ground.

And a shout out to Summer Ji, perhaps the only person who will read this blog. Thanks!