a reader's admission of ignorance regarding poetry |
AN ABHORRENCE OF POEMS by Peter Alistair —finally! I can declare with freedom and candor utter with brutal honesty— without reservation—what for me, and perhaps for many others, amounts to: a heresy against the sacred gods and goddesses of the written word a despoilment of the Muses pure for whom legions of hearts have flown to their lofty dwellings in adoration and there hope to stay forever borne by immortal words. Words! I gather in my hands all previous anxiety like sand—palpable, elusive, coarse —and in one stroke cast it to dissipate among the turbulent storms of the habagat. I do not single you out Auden, Pound, and cummings but nor do you escape reprimand Frost, Stevens, and Moore. all the strange and foreign terrains from words you have weaved to baffle me: all your “mammoth turtles climbing sulphur dreams,” your trees whose leaves I have never seen grow nor wilt. Even you Bautista, Abad, and Garcia Villa do not to me sound any more familiar although I have walked among mango trees where probably at the foot of one Amper buried Miguel’s cat Simeona. they tell me your line breaks are mastery of craft of enjambment when they seem to me nothing but arbitrary. (human whim) they tell me your words life imitates and the life your words imitate live for all time. Any day I’d take a plain, direct statement over confusing lyric lines. so boldly here I make my admission take my stand and over the rooftops sound my barbaric yawp: I have never understood poetry! |