|
resisting meaning
A few days ago, I wrote about how I enjoy reading poetry that, in some way or another, resists the impulse to directly communicate meaning.
Critics of this type of poetry will often be found voicing some variant of the familiar "anybody could do that" complaint. Just throw some random words together, how hard could it be?
Now, poetry of this sort isn't always as "random" or "meaningless" as it might first appear, but I'm going to set that aside for the moment and just point out that trying to create something that doesn't rely on familiar structures or meanings is actually more difficult than it might appear.
Homer: Jazz, pfft. They just make it up as they go along. I could do that: dee dee-dee dee dee dee dee, dee dee dee --
Marge: That's "Mary Had a Little Lamb".
Homer: OK, then, this: doo doo-doo doo doo doo doo, doo doo doo --
Marge: That's the same thing; you just replaced "dee"s with "doo"s.
Homer: D'oh!
Part of why I find poetry very difficult to write is that I'm primarily a narrative writer—that's great for fiction, but I'm not particularly interested in writing narrative poetry—if I want to write narrative, I'm going to write fiction, or maybe a prose poem. When I try to write something more lyrical or something experimental I have enormous difficulty resisting the tide pulling me back towards narrative, towards meaning.
My solution, recently, has been to take a tablet with me to bed, and to write out a quick draft of a poem as soon as I wake up in the morning, or when I wake up in the middle of the night. I've written maybe a dozen of these poems over the last two months, and while I'd stop short of saying that they're great poems, I do find that they show more strange (dreamlike) juxtapositions and unexpected associations than my normal writing, with an internal coherence that's quite loose, a refreshing change from the forwards-moving narrative logic that keeps the fiction integrated.
An interesting experiment, all in all. If I work up the nerve I'll post a few of the better ones here. Labels: poetry_commentary, writing |
Friday, March 05, 2004
11:21 AM
|
