Over the top
It's not the nearly comical
dashing forward of the mind,
but the genuine, debilitating
frustration at the lurching,
incremental movement toward
logic which renders us so
inarticulate in the face
of our own fretful past. No
is always the time. The
future is not to be reckoned.
-Todd Young.
Dear Knowing,
Why look at the moon? Because it confirms something in us, or because it asks us a question, or because we like to feel the way the moon feels. Reading a poem is like looking at the moon, and you don't need me to tell you this, but let us sum it up together anyway. What do we know about poetry?
Poetry is sometimes of three species:
One; the type that affirms, that expresses a thought you had, but lacked the words to say it with.
Two; the kind which requires close examination of meaning in one’s own
mind. Does this idea change my thinking? Is this so? Is it true? Is it
possible?
Three; the type in which you feel, cathartically, the pathos of the situation, scene, or voices in the poem.
Obviously, these are free to hybridize at will, and often there is a mixture of these species within the same poem. Also, poems often have none of this whatever, but you knew that already, too.
PS I particularly like the poems of the second type, the ones which ask the tough questions, but I do so love to be agreed with, like the first kind. On the other hand, living vicariously can't be beat.
