Poetry Manifesto

For my "Creative Writing: Poetry" class last semester, we were implored to write a "manifesto" of sorts, elucidating our take on some fundamental elements of the craft of poetry--meter, rhyme, diction, and so on--as well as a big-picture analysis of what poetry is or should be, what it should do, how it relates to other arts, how it relates to life. I felt a lot of tension in preparing for this assignment, as our class spent a large part of the semester pressing against conventional and personal boundaries of what poetry was allowed to be. We looked at poems by E.E. Cummings, prose poems, and digitally-animated poems on the internet. We looked at the word paintings of Joan Miro, and we even listened to sound collages by John Cage. In every instance, we were supposed to deal with the question, "Is this poetry?"

I enjoyed tracking this expansion of what is legit poetry, and I was grateful for the passion my professor (L.S. Klatt) had for refreshing the shape and content of poetry and for trying to re-engage it with its brother and sisters in other forms of art/science/life. However, when it came time to lay out my opinions on the subject, to mark out some boundaries and definitions, I felt immobilized. The best I could do, at the time, was to let loose with a somewhat obscure philippic as a form of catharsis. After turning in my purgation to Klatt, the real world of grades and potential failure set in, and I found myself nervous about how the thing would be received. Thankfully, although I "failed to engage the terms of the assignment" and "did something completely different, to the extent that it it couldn't be graded," my gracious and understanding professor understood that what I did was worthwhile and valuable for myself. Therefore, he simply pretended it wasn't on the syllabus and didn't factor his non-grade into my final shakedown. At any rate, here is my poetic abreaction:

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Something Scrawled on Napkins in the Attic, Overheard in a Dream

"The emotion of art is impersonal."

- T.S. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent”

"lenses extend unwish through curving wherewhen until unwish returns on its unself."

- E.E. Cummings, “pity this busy monster,manunkind,”


§ 1: That if one wants once to be undone, then tons of dust and rubble must from everything of It become (and us’s It, as well)

Words

Words are crunchy. Words are oozing. Words are kaleidoscopes and chisels. Swiss Army words. Words deal quite a blow. They are, in fact, a gamble. Or, words are upside-down, sometimes. Have you ever had the inside outside? Words have. Or at least, they did once. It’s words when you remember everything, 1 2 3. First comes the picture, then comes the feelings, then comes the phrases in the baby carriage. Words up the ante. At Christmas, or on other special occasions, words make sense. Words are all in, all the time. Words taste good over a warm meal. Reports indicate that they may even contribute to factors which are responsible for low cholesterol and a healthy heart. What wonderful little engines! Words come out to play at night, when the neighbor kids are fast asleep. Sometimes they shoot hoops, and you hear the drumslap of the ball hitting asphalt while you sleep. Slam dunk! Two plus two equals words. Two times two equals words, too. Words break open the ground on their way towards sunlight. They just keep coming. Do you see where they end? Beans and leaves bud on their tips, and their wide stem reaches up, up, and we see giants climbing down, down, word by word by word.

When you go to visit your grandmother, that’s not words. It’s not words if and only if it’s indeed you. What’s you? Not words, that’s for sure. Kissing’s not words, neither. Nor washing dishes. Nope. You are making a quiche with the tomatoes from your garden when you realize there’s a camera outside your window and Martha Steward is beating the eggs. Not words. Nada. Words are not this stale-potato-chip culture. No-sir-ee. Words don’t make cents. Just sentences. Personally, I’ve never had a halo, only visions of paystubs and diplomas. But, words are not quite enrolled in college. And paystubs are just numbers, that’s all. Words have been received with little critical acclaim. They were not nominated for any awards, this year or last. Words are forgotten, or can be. Words have been banned as playground equipment--too many sharp edges. For now, words shiver through the night on a bench in Central Park, wrapped up in newspapers without headlines or captions, only images. The police find words and beat them out of the park, out of the city limits, banned for good, like graffiti in a dark alley or a tattoo on the small of Lady Liberty’s back. Goodbye, words. Goodbye for now. Please speak well of us to whatever lies beyond.

Presence

Oh, but what about the paper? Where is the inkwell? I would recommend a few things: 1) artifacts, 2) artefacts, 3) art, 4) facts, or forget 1-4 and just come inside to drink some cocoa with me by the fire. I have a friend, actually several, that do certain things better than I do. One draws pictures, often utilizing the circle. Another calculates the phases of a chemical shift (on four sheets of paper, stapled one to the other). Some strange denizens downtown attach objects onto walls. They call this “art.” My grandfather makes the walls to which these objects are attached. But as for me and my house, we are bound lock-stock-barrel to: Hallmark Publishing House in 3 easy steps; Walmart University; or, if you’re lucky, you go to bed in a slim volume beneath a dictionary on the 5th floor of an empty library. I invited my friends to come along for a poem, but they objected to my use of the term on the grounds that its utilization marked a cognitive instability on my part and that it would be in the best interests of all concerned if I were committed to a mental institution at once. Well, shucks. From now on, anything goes.

And everything goes with it.


§ 2: That a lantern lights a small, warm cabin and the cave Itself is dark, dark, dark

A Partial, Indirect, and Admittedly Biased Summary of the Issue

Ronald McHegel runs for President of something or other. You drop your great aunt’s glass vase. Ronald McHegel trips and falls. Our poems come to us on a box of Wheaties. Or on the milk carton: Missing Child. What nonsense. Even worse? Yes. In fact, there is a heavy, dusted book in storage in the basement at the museum in a ghost town on the edge of nowhere in a black hole--as of now, the final resting place for all our poems--from hereon referred to by the prosecution as “It”.

It is a pair of moldy socks disguised as a university setting. It is a hot dog in a tuxedo. It is an festering zit under your sister’s... It has issued an array of designations, jurisdictions, blueprints, modules, collections, modifications and edits, implications, resolutions, citations, documentations, complications, and so on and so forth. Lots of words from Greek or Latin, I think. Who knows how things got to be this way? This bad! Yes, you in the front. Speak up, please, this is no cubbyhole we’re suffocating in.

So you would say that the issue is not a new one? Oh, you would rather learn how to bind books yourself, and make one for your dead dog, than release a hit series of novels that reaches high tide on the New York Times Bestseller List? You’d rather eat a brick than here your publisher call you by name through a levitating Bluetooth device? You’d rather burn your manuscripts in the fireplace, taking turns with your best friend, than wire yourself into the intertwining infrastructure of post-industrial wordsmithing? You would rather receive feedback from your little brother than T.S. Eliot, or even a Writer’s Guild, certified non-profit as described in Section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986?

Calms, Balms, Alms...

Swish-swish my friend, and listen-listen.

R.S.V.P

We are leaving this damp, dripping hell-cavern and there’s nothing It can do about it but join the parade. Supplies have been gathered from the furthest recesses of the dark, the lonely, and the blind. We may have to do without technology for a while, but typewriters are not so hard to come by. Neither are our voices and handshakes, small but shiny, glowing even, like the esteemed and mysterious Lingulodinium polyedrum. We’ve hands and voices together, you and I. We’ve them! Our itinerary is carved in the soles of our shoes, a tattered atlas. When we hold them all together, we decipher the way. We find the way out of It. As I was saying, It is a dragon

turd. Will it join the parade? This party is not by invitation only.

So forget chatrooms, scholarly journals, and Barnes and Noble Booksellers. Forget It. Go read a diary or a letter, a masterpiece. Write a sonnet with your eyes closed. Goodbye cool world! There’s an old device called a ditto machine. It ran on a liquid called “spirit fluid.” Now there’s something you don’t see too often these days: spirit. If you see fit, please hide a poem for me under the “Welcome” mat, beside the Hide-A-Key. I won’t even spellcheck the thing. Just be sure to put some soul power inside. Be sure to go it alone, without no recipes. Meanwhile, we’ll be outside, warming our hands over your anthologies, such beautiful glowing embers. We’ll be waiting for It, waiting for you.


§ 3: Appendix

Poetic Units by Era



The Author’s Logical Technique for Analyzing A Text

If a thing says a thing, then that thing is true.
A thing isn’t true.
Therefore, the thing doesn’t say a thing.

A Brief but Exhaustive History of It

- March 15, 37000 BCE: It is a pond
- March 16, 37000 BCE: It crawls out of the pond, grows legs
- February 18, 1237 BCE: another pyramid is built out of It
- December 25, 500 BCE: the It dynasty rules in China
- August 17, 3 CE: Peace on Earth, and Goodwill toward It
- July 6, 700 CE: the Dark Ages begin It in Europe
- October 12, 1492 CE: Christopher Columbus sights It
- April 6, 1909 CE: It is found at the North Pole
- September 1, 1876 CE: the Dutch found It in Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
- November 30, 2007 CE: this is It!