One of the many things LitNav tries to do is recommend great work, to review and highlight great poems, and to show that poetry is still worthwhile. Poetry comes in different styles, but a poem should always have some beauty--some seductive, entrancing words you can't help but keep reading. Beauty comes in many forms, from luxe to countryside, from nature to ancient jewels, from neo-classical to punk.
Regardless, one of the hallmarks of real poetry is the way it forces you to keep reading it. It's like tiramisu in the way you just want more. This is old fashioned taste but I think very central to all poetry. Think of how Homes showcases war in the Iliad, the glory, the pain, the valor, the weaknesses, the triumph, the defeat. It's all beautiful, but just in different ways--some tragic, some realistic, some frail, some human, some cold. It's like a kaleidoscope of beauty.
Reading poetry is one of the greatest leisures waiting in life, it's the dessert.
Nowadays I see too much poetry that is just about quirks, nonsense, tedium, forced uniqueness, shock value or is so simple-minded that I wonder if I am the last remaining person with classic taste in verse on earth. I wonder if people today have ever read actual poetry at all.
I rarely see what I consider to be poetry--and I am open to new styles, after all the turn of the century Modernists were some of the first to break verse wide open and invent wild modern forms, and I am nothing if not a lover of Modernism.
This is a poetry rebellion, and a place to enshrine poets who are writing poetry instead of flotsam.
No comments:
Post a Comment