When I read poetry that knocks off my socks I have two contradictory reactions:
1) stop writing poetry. Just read it. Die happy
2) Steal as much as possible and write like a madman
In all honesty I think I enjoy reading poetry more than writing it.
I mean I am more enraptured by other people's good shit than my own feeble attempts.
I am speaking of World Well Broken
If you haven't read it, (don't want to say important, must read etc.
Then again I will. A MUST READ)
A must read. I like it when people say "a must read." It doesn't get under my skin.
I am not offended by passionate loves. I know I can disagree. As long as the person with the passionate love does not force their passionate love into a canon which is then force fed into little schoolkids who then grow up to fear, dislike, cannot decipher, uncode, poetry.
Some "must reads" might get under skin.
Anyway, World Well Broken is lyrical language both beautiful and crude. Indeterminate but not just any old indeterminate.
I've noticed (myself included) a lot of younger upcoming poets trying to come to terms with L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E= poetics and assuming any indeterminate use of langauge is as good as any other.
Or my subjectivity and private language is just as good as anyone else's.
I don't think so. Some people arrange better.
Even with chance operations the obsessions of good poets leak through.
Some people also have more interesting inner lives and contradictions than others.
Yes, I realize reading the phone book could be a poem (a performance text) but there's some skill involved.
Dare I say the word "craft."
The word "craft" and "formalism" needs recontextualization. It's is not limited to the workshop mfa world or "new formalism."
Polyvocal, multiple, multipile, rent seck.
Dripping paint like Pollack is not the same as dripping paint?
Anyway, who knows what I am trying to say.
Off the cuff, typing not censoring. Trying to sort out, work through, live with my one-thousand contradictions.