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I cannot even begin to put into my own words how essential poetry turns out to be for this experiment in being human. I have a handful of poems that are nearly

I cannot even begin to put into my own words how essential poetry turns out to be for this experiment in being human. I have a handful of poems that are nearly always kicking around in my head and come up in snips and tatters in idle moments. Sometimes it's an actual liturgy -- often, when I'm walking, i get snippets of thomas cranmer's english on endless loops through my mind -- but more often than not it's a figurative one, though no less grounding for that. Poems take a language and bend it past its breaking point, without breaking it.

floodfx 7y ago
What are the poems?
- hprotagonist 7y ago
  You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books, You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self. I've got chunks of ancient epics, medieval poems, some reniassance works, not much that's restoration or romantic or victorian, and a healthy dose of 20th century stuff. Mostly all in english -- it's my only real natural language. I just tried to make a comprehensive list, but I don't think it's productive. Things surface as they're needed, I think.
uoaei 7y ago
Are they just mantras or do they carry some explicable deeper meaning for you? I'm still unaware of what makes poetry so fascinating to people.
- hprotagonist 7y ago
  huh, the last sentence of my post got dropped; put it back now. No, they're not mantras. The easy answer is that rhythmicity of language is just fundamentally compelling to our minds at a very basic level, and poems are a way that we can bend and twist and revel in and celebrate with language that gets that. There's often a "oh, you clever ... " satisfaction as a reader when the poet picks _just_ the perfect word to rhyme off and you're left almost gasping with ... something indescribable ... at how _right_ it was. It's a thing of beauty. In translation, Hafiz: "... the Beloved / has just made such a fantastic move// that the saint is now continually/ tripping over Joy// and bursting out in laughter/ and saying "I Surrender!"" Watching someone, often someone long dead from a time and a place I can't even imagine, working within an often highly constrained form to produce something that still packs a punch -- something that can still reach out and wrench something loose inside your head, something that can communicate things that are probably ineffable -- when it happens to you, you'll know.

floodfx 7y ago

What are the poems?

hprotagonist 7y ago
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books, You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self. I've got chunks of ancient epics, medieval poems, some reniassance works, not much that's restoration or romantic or victorian, and a healthy dose of 20th century stuff. Mostly all in english -- it's my only real natural language. I just tried to make a comprehensive list, but I don't think it's productive. Things surface as they're needed, I think.

uoaei 7y ago

Are they just mantras or do they carry some explicable deeper meaning for you? I'm still unaware of what makes poetry so fascinating to people.

hprotagonist 7y ago
huh, the last sentence of my post got dropped; put it back now. No, they're not mantras. The easy answer is that rhythmicity of language is just fundamentally compelling to our minds at a very basic level, and poems are a way that we can bend and twist and revel in and celebrate with language that gets that. There's often a "oh, you clever ... " satisfaction as a reader when the poet picks _just_ the perfect word to rhyme off and you're left almost gasping with ... something indescribable ... at how _right_ it was. It's a thing of beauty. In translation, Hafiz: "... the Beloved / has just made such a fantastic move// that the saint is now continually/ tripping over Joy// and bursting out in laughter/ and saying "I Surrender!"" Watching someone, often someone long dead from a time and a place I can't even imagine, working within an often highly constrained form to produce something that still packs a punch -- something that can still reach out and wrench something loose inside your head, something that can communicate things that are probably ineffable -- when it happens to you, you'll know.