Entry 329 — My Poetic Practice
.
Geof Huth, like I, has too many projects going. Unlike I, however, he actually carries out commendable work on his. One of them he calls A Poetics. This us up to its 60th chapter-sized section, which makes up his latest entry to his blog. It’s easier to say what it is not than what it is, other than mostly a wide-ranging work of evocature (i.e. what nullinguists would call a “prose poem”) full of sometimes loopy but almost always fascinating, provocative thoughts about poetry, mostly concerning his own practice of that art. What it is not is a work of verosophy, or serious attempt to pin down what poetry is–nor need it be. It’s made me realize, though, that we need a term for that, “poetics” having become nullingated. My immediate and therefore only suggested term is “verosopoetics,” which is short for “versophical poetics.” I would define it as “the verosophical study of the nature and function of poetry.”
Anyway, Geof’s A Poetics has inspired me to try to work out a short comparable effort, not a poetics, but a summary of my own poetic practice. I think I can do it in one sentence:
As a poet, I try to employ words or words and other elements of expression to form texts that celebrate some significantly important aspect or portion of material reality, using a sufficient number of flow-breaks to adhere to my definition of poetry, and are reasonably coherent and sufficiently fresh in some way as to give pleasure to any sympathetic, reasonably informed and intelligent person who encounters them.
I hope I can make this less klunky. Right now I think it satisfactorily sums up everything I do as a poet, but I doubt that it can, so hope for feed-back that can help me take care of that. One thing that’s intentionally not in it is anything about making the world a better place, except by increasing the number of objects in the world that give pleasure. Peace and the abolition of things like oppression and hunger are fine things to strive for, but outside my interests as a poet.
Later Note: The above is not my idea of how what “proper” poetic practice, only about why I try for as a poet. Also, “some significantly important subject” is some subject significantly important to me.