A POEM, now

I'm really not that into creating poetry. I like reading it, sometimes. But as far making it up, here's the thing:

There are no more rules. Nothing that you can think of to do in poetry is outside of 1) the already done or 2) the legitimate.

Don't agree? Note the straight-faced critiques of a recent poetry movement based on compiling random search engine results

I rest my case.

Poetry is a maddening thing, in which the concepts of "good" and "bad" are now hopelessly lost behind the concepts of "new" and "different".

Example:

So much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

Good? Bad? Who's to say? But tell me that anything in this poem demonstrates some necessary skill or unique intellect! Tell me that the poem would be anything special if the author were anonymous.

This reality is why I much prefer making songs, where poetic phrases can be combined with musical textures, and thus at least one part of the equation must carry some level of objective decency (i.e. the music must be listenable, otherwise the words are irrelevant). Not to mention the diverse moods that different music can confer up an identical line of text...

But I digress. Anyway, it was lyrics I was imagining when I came up with the key part of the long poem I am going to begin posting.

This part is the 7th (and last) section, which I imagined not in terms of how it would look on a page, but rather how it would sound spoken/sung aloud.

The other six sections were created to set up the finale (and to comment on...well, you'll see).



What was written above hopefully makes sense. "Poetry" is a pretty big bite to attempt to chew. Especially in conjunction with "beer enjoyment".