The State of the Art...Your Comments
It looks like the most recent post on Dan Wilcox's blog (about low attendance at the latest "Community of Writers" event sponsored by the Hudson Valley Writers Guild) has touched off a big discussion on the state of poetry and spoken word in the area. There are a lot of different ideas and thoughts on the local poetry scene and open mics as a whole. As of this writing, there are 25 comments on the issue.
Click here to read the post and the comments and feel free to add your own to the mix.
After reading the comments and even adding some of my own, it got me thinking about a greater issue that I have been dealing with for a few months now since I started working on a project for OTHER:. The issue is, what is poetry to you? So, I am going to open it up to you, the poets, to let me know what poetry is to you. Go to the comments and speak your mind.
Labels: open mic, poetry events, workshops
3 Comments:
What is poetry?
Is poetry only what is on the page? Is spoken word the only true form of poetry? Is "academic" poetry the standard to go by?
Let us know what poetry is to you.
from Therese Broderick--I think poetry is the sound of the human voice within the register that exists between speech and song. For each individual person, this register of his/her voice between speech and song will sound unique. The boundaries between speech/poetry and poetry/song are not rigid and clear-cut. Poetry overlaps with both speech and song. I think that what's written on the page is one degree removed from the sound of poetry. What's on the page is the notation of poetry (just as the notation of music on a printed score is one degree removed from the sound of music). So that's what I think now about poetry (and what I think may change tomorrow). Talking about "what is poetry" is much easier than talking about "what is good poetry." That's another entire conversation.
Thanks Therese. I like your take on the question.
I do not think that we should try to figure out what "good" poetry is.
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