A Matter of Degrees

Does the poet need degrees
to explicate upon the world?
To write the verse unknoweable
outside the ivy
coterie.

I think they do.
they do you know,
degrees of hunger, loss
and pain.

Of nature and depravity
of joy, and tears
degrees of our humanity.



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I am Old and Grumpy

Don't believe the bumph,
Old people can be mean and grumpy
We've played the game,
We rode the baby boom wave.

Stand aside we're moving through
the market
the demographics
and God help
the rest homes
and hospitals
when we arrive en masse.

We'll have rock bands, bandanas
Woodstock memories
Mary Jane
Loud music
Man, it will be great.

So look out I'm old
and grumpy
and I'm heading for a
Jugular near you...

I am growing old disgracefully :)

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I am not against academic poets

Those of you who read my last polemic may have thought that I am anti-academic poetry. For the record I am not. Academia and academic poets have a lot to offer (e.g. I recently completed the Modern and Contemporary American Poetry course from UPenn that was available as a MOOC and this course has changed my attitudes to and appreciation of poetry).

My complaint was more about some academics and notaries (not all of academia, Thank God) laying claim to the ownership of poetry, and claiming that lay people can not understand modern poetry.

Poetry belongs to all. Poetry expresses human experience in all of it's shades and hues. Prison poetry is just as valuable as academic poetry. They just have different audiences.

With the return of performance and slam poetry in the wider community, poetry is reaching out and this is good for all poets and poetry lovers.



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I am ANGRY - What a Crock

I have just come across this objectionable piece of bovine fecal material about the reason why less people read poetry these days. What a crock...

In an address to the Association of Writers & Writing Programs this February, the president of the Poetry Foundation, John Barr, described how the popular poet writing for the common reader essentially disappeared with the advent of Modernism. The 19th-century model of poets publishing in mainstream venues such as newspapers was replaced by the 20th-century model, in which the increasing fragmentation and difficulty of poetry required specialists to discern it, moving it into the college classroom. Today, to call a poem "accessible" is practically an insult, and promotional events like National Poetry Month are derided by many poetry diehards as the reduction of a complex and often deeply private art form to a public spectacle.

John Barr is completely wrong. Many are sick of this insipid, arid, anemic, wish-washy, dishwater served up in academia today.

I am offended as a common writer and reader. I deliberately steered away from post graduate training in poetry just because of people such as John Barr. I want to feel, and live and be a common, as opposed to a college, poet.

Rebels arise and condemn this academic led heresy...

Do such people know about slam poetry, outlaw poetry, the poetry of the streets.. I doubt it.

GIVE US BACK POETRY FOR THE COMMON READER.


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Response Poetry

Response poetry is not a new phenomenon. One of the earliest examples is Raleigh's response to Marlowe in the Nymph - Shepherd poems. The playful or veangeful response to another's poetry has been a century's old game.

W. Todd Kaneko (2008) in a paper about response poetry noted some points about writing a response to someones else's poems. For the body around these points click the response poetry link above.

1. Write a reply to the poem.

2. Imitate the form of the poem.

3. Build off a primary metaphor that the poem works from.

4. Steal the first line of the poem.

5. Use a passage as an epigraph.

6. Turn Prose into Verse.

7. Write the opposite of the poem.

I encourage you to read Kaneko's paper to get a fuller explanation along with examples.


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Guest Post - Morning Muse

The poem below was written as a challenge and response to my poem Night Time Stealth Poetry. Now I know whose bed the muse jumps into after mine. The poet is Paul Pindis

My Morning Muse

She slips beside me in my bed.
As yet, all others have not stirred.
She plants a kiss that says she’s here,
And once again my mind is hers.

I might attempt to close my eyes,
To hold off thoughts she chose to seed.
One might as well try block the sun
As not pursue what she’s decreed.

The inspiration that she brings,
Like clockwork, every day at dawn,
Will not delay a moment more.
I’m nothing but my muse’s pawn.

A mistress that won’t be denied,
‘Tis folly to think I’d complain.
For with her tasks she brings the gifts
No poet ever would disdain.

And here is my poem being which is being responded to.

Night Time Stealth Poetry

Why is night the time
To vent my spleen
Upon the page?

At night
The stillness creeps
entering
into my consciousness
like a stealthy cat,

Maybe the day is far to real
To allow me
To wander, explore and
Inhabit the place
That lies
Between my mind
and heart.

The place called the
Night Time Stealth and Poetry,
Arcade.

DK



Thanks Paul for rising to the challenge.

I now have a new genre of poetry called response poetry...

Grant


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Poetry App for iPhone and iPad

Hi All

I am plugging the Poetry Foundations application called Poetry which is available for the iPad and iPhone. It has thousands of categorised poems, contemporary and older and when you spin it gives a list of poems across two parameters e.g. 49 poems on BLAME & NATURE (Check out Electrocuting an Elephant); 151 poems on HUMOR and LIFE
and 31 poems on BOREDOM & YOUTH. There are more combinations than I have time to outline in this quick post.

I find that I need to read copious amounts of poetry to keep my own creative juices flowing. A day without poetry is a nightmare.

Check it out and let me know what you think.
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