Like Doctor Frankenstein,
\nthe poet desperate to breathe poetry into
\nthe blank corpse of random words
\nlying dead on the slab before him
\ndigs down through the trivia and detritus
\nclaws into the calamities and exultations of
\nhis life that was never enough until
\nnow when it is too late to begin<\/p>\n
So much has passed
\nword after line after stanza after page
\nsimiles metaphors symbols visons epiphanies
\nstark revelations concerning minutiae tiny discoveries
\nhistrionic compulsions fully impacting discrete microcosms
\nthat hardly mattered moments after the words appeared<\/p>\n
What is the point of performing an art that ranks
\nin the public consciousness with sounds
\nmade by huffing across a jug mouth?<\/p>\n
In Celtic history, among others, two clans could resolve
\ntheir disputes with a battle between
\nsingle representatives chosen from
\neach clan’s most powerful
\nthe mightiest warrior or the clan poet
\nthe other clan would select whether
\nthey would rather face the poet or the fighter
\nmost often they chose the warrior
\nbecause the poet was rightly feared as
\nthe one who could demoralize, ridicule
\ndefeat them without bloodshed
\nthis in a culture with an oral tradition that carried
\nthe mythology the history the anecdotes
\nwithout changing a word for thousands of years
\nso precious were these words these verses, these poems.<\/p>\n
What is a poem to us?<\/p>\n
In this culture of chosistes<\/em>, in which facts outweigh But there is another culture So we shall dig Like Doctor Frankenstein, the poet desperate to breathe poetry into the blank corpse of random words lying dead on the slab before him digs down through the trivia and detritus<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,9,10,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creative-writing","category-on-poetry","category-on-the-process-of-writing","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nideas in which sophistry trumps substance
\nin which money talks louder than ideas
\nIn this chosiste<\/em> culture poetry has no place<\/p>\n
\nthe culture of the real mind
\nonce inhabited by the child
\nwho saw no clothes on the clown
\nin that culture art is clarity
\nin that culture all can speak
\nin that culture all can comprehend
\nin that culture digging moves mountains<\/p>\n
\nand we will write poetry<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"