Unabashed

I hate poetry. I’ve fought that impulse for years, but the fact remains that poetry today is a contrived mess of lackluster swamprot. If I pick up a magazine or read an e-zine I just skim right over the poetry, which invariably sucks said swamprot. What ever happened to poetry that told a story, poetry with heart and gusto? Robert Service wrote excellent poetry, and I find that the majority of what I can tolerably read was all written prior to 1960 and usually has to be much older even than that. I love an old sea shanty, and I love to read Shakespeare. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not asking for Shakespearean quality, just something with a little nerve. Who publishes this crap? Is there any where in the world where good poetry can be found or is it all just so much swamprot?

Here’s the poem of the day from Poetry.com:
Your eyes
like turquoise camel beads
smooth polished stones
tumbled in oceans of tears
ward off evil spirits
whispering and leering ’round icy columned
bedposts

Okay, it’s not exactly swamprot, but it’s far from anything close to quality, IMHO.

And as for this recent fad of writing “short-shorts” or short stories under 500 words: isn’t that what poetry used to be? Short-shorts written in verse; a way to write a story and to exalt the language, to show that words can have beauty and power. Telling a story in verse can be a powerful form of artistic expression, but sadly only about one out of a million in this modern era is worth reading.

Unfortunately, however, poetry will not die, because there are too many people left who think it’s a still a viable art form. These are the whimsical people who still sit down with a pad and pen and scribble, trying to think of a different word to rhyme with ‘fly’ than ‘cry’ or ‘die.’ Unfortunately, they always choose cry or die, however, and the poem of the day ends up looking something like this:

My poem of the day, entitled “Too Bad”
Poetry; how I wish it would die.
It makes me cry, makes me want to fly away
to another day where poetry does not suck.

Here’s another blogger’s opinion I value.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: poetry