Poets talk about poetry
…no fractured, disjoint,
inchoate grab-bags
of words…
“A poem…begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong,
a homesickness, a lovesickness…”
Robert Lee Frost (1874-1963)
in his 1916 letter to Louis Untermeyer (1885-1977)
Frost and Untermeyer exchanged letters (imagine!) for almost 50 years. I’m pretty sure every single one of them involved more than 140 characters and spaces…think about it, when you’re actually scribbling, you don’t have to “write” a space…
There are, I guess, about a million or so ways, more or less, to define “poetry.” In 1827 Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) offered his “homely definition” of poetry: “the right words in the right order.” Sometimes I think poetry is the manifestation of lust for the right words.
I have this lust in my heart.
I am a poet, a writer, a teacher, a moralist, a historian, and an unflinching student of human nature. Some things I’d rather not know, but I’m stuck with knowing them. I think a lot. I strive to express truth and give context—both rational and emotional—to reality.
I think words can be pictures, and lovely songs, and bodacious scents, and private flavors, and early morning caresses that wake each part of me, one at a time. I know some of those words, and, from time to time, I write some of them.
Here’s a final thought for consideration: Coleridge also advised (1832) that “…if every verse is not poetry, it [should be], at least, good sense.” That makes good sense to me. I have no tolerance for some poets’ work that is merely a fractured, disjoint, inchoate grab-bag of words. A largely random collection of words is not likely to be a poem. I like to read (and write) a beginning, and an end, and some really meaty sweetie stuff in the middle.
Coleridge’s 1827 definition of poetry is from Specimens of the Table Talk of the late Samuel Taylor Coleridge, written by Henry Nelson Coleridge and published in 1835.
Louis Untermeyer was an American poet, anthologist, critic, and editor. He was appointed the 14th Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1961.
For example, read The Poetry of Robert Frost, available on Amazon
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2017 All rights reserved.
My first name was rain: A dreamery of poems with 52 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
Book review: Shantung Compound
They didn’t care much
about each other…
by Langdon Gilkey
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