I don’t really know what to write about tonight, so here’s a poem I wrote a couple of days ago:
I do not stand up on the stage
to scream primeval pain and rage
about how life is meaningless
and freedom’s just a bigger cage
It may be valid art, I guess
but I’d prefer you were impressed
with the actual words I choose
and the thoughts that they suggest
Perhaps intended to amuse
or maybe to express my views
but what the poem is all about
is in the words I choose to use
It’s not the voice, there is no doubt
that when the words are written out
a whisper can become a shout
a whisper can become a shout
I’m not sure I succeeded 100% witgh this one. It sort of hearkens back to a conversation I had one night at The Tulip, which was our venue for poetry readings at the time, and we were standing on the stairs between the basement, where the readings were, and the bar upstairs, and Eric Cummings said to me “It’s not the stage, it’s the page” and that’s always stuck with me.
Also, though, it’s about the difference between a poem as sound, and feeling, and one where the words are expressing a more concrete thought, which I, personally, like them to.
There’s more to it than that, too, but I find that as I try to explain it in non-rhyming terms, it comes across sounding even weaker and more banal than the poem itself.
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