Glancing Blow to Poetry
Okay, this should have been under a different blog, so sue me.
This is about poetry, more specifically the reading of poetry. I haven't been to a reading in a while, but recently (as recently as today) I have checked out some clips of local and national readings of poetry, and I think to myself, what the fuck happened man.
When I was reading poetry there was some of this active performance art going on, in fact I was part of it. You think I wore weird clothes and outlandish jewelry in everyday life, well maybe back then I did, but not now. I look back on my days as a poet, or should I say performance artist, and think wow I must have been drunk, if I at all sounded like the poets I hear now.
On looking at the crap I used to try to pass off as poetry to the people who all seemed to think it was awesome, I wonder were they all drunk as well.
I have re-read most of the classics now, or am reading some of them now, and think how can anyone compare to this. The reason they are classics is because they are the best there was, it does not mean there wasn't a whole ton of really bad poets also writing and reading at the time of Keats or even Chaucer.
Back in the days when I was writing and reading, I tended to reject the works of the great poets, except maybe Poe who still inspires me to sit in a dark room and mumble incoherently to myself.
Now as I contemplate looking again at the possibility of writing and reading poetry, I am astounded by the lack of discipline, and well just worthwhile content in poetry. It is almost as if the poetry reflects the society, and maybe it does, but if it does, we are in trouble, deep trouble people. Poetry today lacks something, I haven't quite put my finger on it, but it lacks something, that just might be the trouble with society, we just lack something, just out of reach.
Like I said this belongs to another blog really, but I am here now, and this is where I am going to state what I am going to state. Over the next little while I am posting some of my older works on my other blog lowly scribe or Road Scholar, mostly uncut and raw from the page they were written on. This is more to preserve them as I feel that they should survive beyond me, even if they will hold almost no value to anyone but me.
The other day I chatted with an old friend of mine, and she said she still had some of the writing I had done back when we were still in high school, well at least she was. I mean, I was enrolled there, I just rarely showed up, and that was agreeable to the administrators as well. I thought about that, and concluded that maybe when I am dead and gone, maybe she will have something that might be worth something, but then I realized that the reason she held on to them is because they were worth something to her then, and now. That got me to thinking, maybe I wasn't that bad a poet after all, but that thought was fleeting, and thankfully passed out of my head not a moment too soon.
A while ago I went to my step-son's comedy nite, a couple of times, and it was entertaining, but most likely not for the reasons why it was supposed to be. I find entertainment in the drowning comic, is that so unusual, why else do people watch car races or even horse races. It was at this time that I remembered my days of being a performance artist. How that opened doors for me, and got me into places I never would have thought I would have gone. I was asked to write for a little underground paper, and that lead to other engagements, and art openings, and eventually to a position in the Oswego Art Guild. I might have been famous for a moment, if I had kept up the pace. I didn't, I hated the light, I despised the attention, and wanted it to end. The truth is, and I can admit this now, was I did not want it to end, I just wanted to act like I wanted it to end, so I could get more of it for being against the flow.
Well it did end, and I am nothing, to nobody, but maybe a few old friends that still remember my days of sitting in the dark corner of the room writing feverishly while girls waited to read what I wrote, and guys of those girls wanted to break my fingers, if only they could. I was protected then, and I knew it, so I exploited it, and laughed in the face of those guys that thought they were tough. To this day the one that did take the shot at me one of those odd days that I showed up for class, learned that I was a protected person, and to take me on because I talked to your girlfriend was only going to end in you getting hurt badly, and when I see him, he still apologizes. Fortunately I guess I do not see anyone anymore from those days, because we are not what we once were.
I am not the writer I once was. Not that I do not write anymore, as is evident by this blog post, and by many others, plus the books I am slowly grinding out when I have the time to put in a few words, but that I am not nearly as prolific as I once was. I hope that is a good thing, I hope that means the stuff I am writing now is more mature, is better for the lack of writing frequency. Still I am not accomplished as a writer either. I have no real publishing credits to my name, an anthology here or there, a few starts and fits with novels I have shopped around, and a series I have worked on but can't seem to find the energy or time to finish.
Well if you are still reading this, good show, you are dedicated. This is just a lot run on sentences and massing up of disconnected thoughts, that ramble on forever. The real world intrudes, as the gamers say, and I have to go to tend to the sheep, and my wife Arleta, so I have to let this one go, as it is, and maybe I will put some more up that are the same. Just a little look inside, do you really want to go there?
Sleep Well,
JD
This is about poetry, more specifically the reading of poetry. I haven't been to a reading in a while, but recently (as recently as today) I have checked out some clips of local and national readings of poetry, and I think to myself, what the fuck happened man.
When I was reading poetry there was some of this active performance art going on, in fact I was part of it. You think I wore weird clothes and outlandish jewelry in everyday life, well maybe back then I did, but not now. I look back on my days as a poet, or should I say performance artist, and think wow I must have been drunk, if I at all sounded like the poets I hear now.
On looking at the crap I used to try to pass off as poetry to the people who all seemed to think it was awesome, I wonder were they all drunk as well.
I have re-read most of the classics now, or am reading some of them now, and think how can anyone compare to this. The reason they are classics is because they are the best there was, it does not mean there wasn't a whole ton of really bad poets also writing and reading at the time of Keats or even Chaucer.
Back in the days when I was writing and reading, I tended to reject the works of the great poets, except maybe Poe who still inspires me to sit in a dark room and mumble incoherently to myself.
Now as I contemplate looking again at the possibility of writing and reading poetry, I am astounded by the lack of discipline, and well just worthwhile content in poetry. It is almost as if the poetry reflects the society, and maybe it does, but if it does, we are in trouble, deep trouble people. Poetry today lacks something, I haven't quite put my finger on it, but it lacks something, that just might be the trouble with society, we just lack something, just out of reach.
Like I said this belongs to another blog really, but I am here now, and this is where I am going to state what I am going to state. Over the next little while I am posting some of my older works on my other blog lowly scribe or Road Scholar, mostly uncut and raw from the page they were written on. This is more to preserve them as I feel that they should survive beyond me, even if they will hold almost no value to anyone but me.
The other day I chatted with an old friend of mine, and she said she still had some of the writing I had done back when we were still in high school, well at least she was. I mean, I was enrolled there, I just rarely showed up, and that was agreeable to the administrators as well. I thought about that, and concluded that maybe when I am dead and gone, maybe she will have something that might be worth something, but then I realized that the reason she held on to them is because they were worth something to her then, and now. That got me to thinking, maybe I wasn't that bad a poet after all, but that thought was fleeting, and thankfully passed out of my head not a moment too soon.
A while ago I went to my step-son's comedy nite, a couple of times, and it was entertaining, but most likely not for the reasons why it was supposed to be. I find entertainment in the drowning comic, is that so unusual, why else do people watch car races or even horse races. It was at this time that I remembered my days of being a performance artist. How that opened doors for me, and got me into places I never would have thought I would have gone. I was asked to write for a little underground paper, and that lead to other engagements, and art openings, and eventually to a position in the Oswego Art Guild. I might have been famous for a moment, if I had kept up the pace. I didn't, I hated the light, I despised the attention, and wanted it to end. The truth is, and I can admit this now, was I did not want it to end, I just wanted to act like I wanted it to end, so I could get more of it for being against the flow.
Well it did end, and I am nothing, to nobody, but maybe a few old friends that still remember my days of sitting in the dark corner of the room writing feverishly while girls waited to read what I wrote, and guys of those girls wanted to break my fingers, if only they could. I was protected then, and I knew it, so I exploited it, and laughed in the face of those guys that thought they were tough. To this day the one that did take the shot at me one of those odd days that I showed up for class, learned that I was a protected person, and to take me on because I talked to your girlfriend was only going to end in you getting hurt badly, and when I see him, he still apologizes. Fortunately I guess I do not see anyone anymore from those days, because we are not what we once were.
I am not the writer I once was. Not that I do not write anymore, as is evident by this blog post, and by many others, plus the books I am slowly grinding out when I have the time to put in a few words, but that I am not nearly as prolific as I once was. I hope that is a good thing, I hope that means the stuff I am writing now is more mature, is better for the lack of writing frequency. Still I am not accomplished as a writer either. I have no real publishing credits to my name, an anthology here or there, a few starts and fits with novels I have shopped around, and a series I have worked on but can't seem to find the energy or time to finish.
Well if you are still reading this, good show, you are dedicated. This is just a lot run on sentences and massing up of disconnected thoughts, that ramble on forever. The real world intrudes, as the gamers say, and I have to go to tend to the sheep, and my wife Arleta, so I have to let this one go, as it is, and maybe I will put some more up that are the same. Just a little look inside, do you really want to go there?
Sleep Well,
JD
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