Further thoughts on poetry

When I was a kid, a tenth grader, we were asked to write a poem.

I strum the strings on my guitar,
and I go free, away from here,
and over trees and through the wood,
away from things I understood.

Okay, it's a little amateur. But it strikes me. I remember even then wondering how I came up with it. I probably just went with the simplest and most straight-forward thing I knew.

We're students of information much of our lives. We're asked to professionally master a good bit of data.

And here is a poem about how you can leave the barrage behind, go for a walk in the woods, and let a cramped brain let its thoughts play out, beginning as soon as you walk out the door. Poetry is found in nature, in the context of natural settings and metaphors that reflect the natural world. In some ways, a poet is a bad student, neglecting something immediate, in order to go chew and mull over things as the mind needs to, processing, out in the quiet.

The poet--again, I refer to a mode of thought--wants for everyone to be able to think poetically, that this mode is not short circuited by all the demands for our attention. (The economy sucks now because of that inattention, that 'I don't care about poetry, or care about others, or care about caring.' That regal Nazi coldness, 'fuck off, I'm minding my business.') The poet is the idiot of modern times, and yet, how else would we keep on without poetry?

To Kill a Mockingbird: here is an example of a book that is unconstrained as far as offering poetry.

JFK: sometimes a student has to neglect his studies in order to follow what he finds important, the work he will take up. Dead on, as far as poets.

Poetry is a way of considering deeper implications. One wishes the modern bank/financial institutions employed them. (They'll use that in their ads. Employ a poetic actor, a Lincoln pretender.)

Poetry: you learn by doing. And funny how you sort of know how to go about it, without too much of a push. An ocean behind you, why not add to it?