From e0b1c2737397839ff5ba8c129d31baf6f97805fe Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Case Duckworth Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2015 13:10:17 -0700 Subject: Finish linking Elegy, Hezekiah; Rename files --- 11-arspoetica.txt | 43 ------------------------------------------- 1 file changed, 43 deletions(-) delete mode 100644 11-arspoetica.txt (limited to '11-arspoetica.txt') diff --git a/11-arspoetica.txt b/11-arspoetica.txt deleted file mode 100644 index b950645..0000000 --- a/11-arspoetica.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,43 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: 'Ars poetica' -project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' -project-order: 11 -genre: 'prose' -... - -What is poetry? [Poetry is.][is] Inasmuch as life is, so is poetry. Here is -the problem: life is very big and complex. Human beings are neither. We -are small, simple beings that don’t want to know all of the myriad -interactions happening all around us, within us, as a part of us, all -the hours of every day. We much prefer knowing only that which is just -in front of our faces, staring us back with a look of utter contempt. -This is why many people are depressed. - -Poetry is an attempt made by some to open up our field of view, to maybe -check on something else that isn’t staring us in the face so -contemptibly. Maybe something else is smiling at us, we think. So we -write poetry to force ourselves to look away from the [mirror][] of our -existence to see something else. - -This is generally painful. To make it less painful, poetry compresses -reality a lot to make it more consumable. It takes life, that seawater, -and boils it down and boils it down until only the salt remains, the -important parts that we can focus on and make some sense of the -senselessness of life. Poetry is life bouillon, and to thoroughly enjoy -a poem we must put that bouillon back into the seawater of life and make -a delicious soup out of it. To make this soup, to decompress the poem -into an emotion or life, requires a lot of brainpower. A good reader -will have this brainpower. A good poem will not require it. - -What this means is: a poem should be self-extracting. It should be a -rare vanilla in the bottle, waiting only for someone to open it and -sniff it and suddenly there they are, in the orchid that vanilla came -from, in the tropical land where it grew next to its brothers and sister -vanilla plants. They feel the pain of having their children taken from -them. A good poem leaves a feeling of loss and of intense beauty. The -reader does nothing to achieve this—they are merely the receptacle of -the feeling that the poem forces onto them. In a way, poetry is a crime. -But it is the most beautiful crime on this crime-ridden earth. - -[is]: words-meaning.html -[mirror]: moongone.html -- cgit 1.4.1-21-gabe81