I finally made it back to the Poet’s Salon at my friend’s Kath Abela’s. I was fourteenth in line to read a poem and have the group give me their opinions of my poem. While waiting for my turn, I marveled at the prose set before me by the other poets in the room and sometimes sat a bit irritated at some of the opinion’s being thrown at the authors of the works. There seems to be a VERY fine line that creatives are supposed to traverse where they use images, metaphors and analogies that the ‘common’ person can relate to without becoming cliched. There were a few poems that had what some might call cliched phrases, but in those cases specifically, I was not offended as they were personal testaments to loved ones, some of which were departed. I have to say that I really don’t care how many cliches appear in a dedication to someone who is loved and dead. That is an area I feel is beyond criticism of form or text. It is meant in my opinion to be experienced on the level of hearing one who has loved another with a fierce enough heart to express their emotions in writing. From me, as a fan of poetry and of the idea of love, it gets a pass–it is exempt from contempt based on the nature of its creation. Now if you write about a beach, I’ll be a bit more critical, but come on…how can you tell someone that their remembrance of a lost mother or father who was their world, wasn’t expressed with enough creativity???!!! I’m trying not to be pissed right now.
So anyhow, as I listened to some of the poets get mauled over trivial crap that I didn’t at all agree with, I sat in expectation of my poem “Combustion” which in my opinion is not the kind of poem that gets a pass. I awaited my own skewering because how could something as insignificant as my little rant about a vocalist experiencing the music and the crowd elude the blades of criticism when previous poets were hammered so intently over such deep and important happenings in their lives? I mean really, the use of sax instead of the word sex isn’t original. Almost everything I create is a direct result of something I’ve seen, heard or heard of by someone of greater talent than me. Perhaps 10% of what I do came from some magical place or direct from God, on a good day, I may pull 20% from the aforementioned source. Everything else, at least began as something I love about something someone else created be it mood, setting, tone, well, something. I believe not all artists are honest about this, but at least for me, there you have it. No potential for genius. Only translation.
The poem I brought was the result of about 10 minutes of deliberation with myself. I want something where I can benefit from other’s insights and criticisms which means I need something that I feel is as good as I can get it. I threw out the notion of about five poems that I considered basically, because I thought I can do better and didn’t see how other’s opinions might help something that wasn’t as good as I, alone, could get it. I settled on a poem called Combustion. Before I give you the comments I received on the poem and insights into my original intent on the imagery, I will give you the poem itself. Here it is:
“Combusion”
Brass blasts
and stabs
an insistent punctuation
to the slow moaning groan growing
in my belly
pushing up my wind pipe
past vocal chords strumming and becoming
its own primal dream of harmonized madness.
Cresting this crescendoing wail
spine arches
eyelids shutter
consciousness convulses in spasms.
Momentarily spent…
The beat backs down into lazy circles
riding smooth strikes
on the bell of a bronze full moon.
Soon swells trumpet their ebb
Eager…
Hungrily fornicating with the flow
as if they’ve never had sax before
and with a single melodic caress
I press myself
back into the fortissimo flesh
finding my stroke
with a side to side sway
that says I’
ve got all day.
Then four nails rake
across six string theories
of revolution that begins a new spiral
up into a vortex of outstretched limbs
and I bend in their winds of strange
speaking in tongues – embracing my change
from hard charged electrical being
to a new form of energy few ears have ever seen.
–End poem–
Okay. That said, the poem was received very well. I made a mistake on reading through the laughter that came after “as if they’ve never had sax before….”, but that isn’t going to happen often as I recognize based on the advice of my comedian friend Chris Valenti, that I’m supposed to give my audience permission to laugh, that I’m supposed to halt until the laughter is done. At least to a certain extent.
So before I get to the written advice that was handed back to me by what I would call some incredible poets (hence my outrage over some of the detrimental comments to their work I referenced above), I will go into some of the spoken thoughts on my poem first. A few of the poets correctly found the ‘beat poet’ reference in this writing. I’m not a huge fan of poets like Kerouac, and his ilk, but I am a fan nonetheless. Beat poetry figured into the mix here. Different people had different views of what the poem was supposed to mean, but frankly, I’m a big fan of the reader bringing their own experience to a poem (again, hence my sometimes irritation at readers trying to hog-tie poets about what the reader does and doesn’t understand about analogies…) so I made no “corrections” about how the listener experienced the poem and my original intent. I find absolute validation in how a listener experiences a poem and take great pleasure when someone connects to something little ‘ole me wrote in a way I didn’t originally intend. This may sound silly, but as they describe my own poem back to me through their eyes, it adds to my own creative experience. I’m not sure at this point how else to put that.
One person found the poem to speak for the disenfranchised, another considered it rap because I listen to hip-hop and rap I guess. In any case, the bludgeoning I was anticipating didn’t happen. A few people felt I read it too fast and I agree with that although the energy of the poem demands a certain quickness. With that in mind, I still agree with them. I could have gone a little slower in some parts. Now on to the written thoughts on it…
- Many liked the line: “fornicating with the flow/ as if they’ve never had sax before…(this line especially I was expecting to get lynched for on the topic of cliches, but somehow managed not to…)
- Many sensed anger here, but I didn’t (while I didn’t suppress the experience of those who got anger out of the poem, this listener got this aspect as I intended, there is no anger in this particular writing that I was trying to get across.)
- Subtle rhyming (Hah! Someone caught it. I tried to rhyme in places not entirely expected to help the flow of it, inspired by Saul Williams and Kamau Daaood.)
- Several people felt the poem was musical and one felt that it was an interpretation of what I was listening to. (Actually, it was an interpretation of performing the song.)
- Overall I got great reviews on it and the line I expected to take the most blows over, wound up being the line most loved the most–I guess this just reaffirms my notion that if I might as well go with my gut because I have no clue what will and won’t work with listeners. They always manage to surprise me with what they like about my work.
Back to the topic of cliches’, one of the poets mentioned that to him, cliches’ are forgiven when they are used in a way that he hasn’t seen before. I think that makes sense, and I think everyone’s reaction to my cliche’ provided a general consensus of agreement with him.
Posted in Attitude, Influences, Poem, Poetry Critique, Poetry Salon, Uncategorized
Tags: beat poet, beat poetry, Jack Kerouac, Kamau Daaood, Kath Abela Wilson, Poems, Poet's Salon, Poetry, Poetry Critique, Saul Williams
