Saturday, April 11, 2009
I've never really liked poetry. Perhaps I'm just callous, and not understanding of other people's more emotional sides. Perhaps I just don't know how to express myself. Perhaps I don't understand it, or maybe I just can't be bothered to read a bunch of rhymes or rythmes that either make no sense or make me want to gag. I'm sure there's good poetry out there. I confess to loving Doctor Seuss, who I suppose was a kind of poet. There were some other funnier poem books I enjoyed when I was in 4th grade or so. But then came high school, and the sort of black dribble that came out of my co-goths mouths and was written in their notebooks made me wish I was blind and deaf. I haven't liked poetry ever since.
I'm sorry to say I'm even less impressed by this hyper-poetry stuff. At least my friends in high school wrote things that made some sort of sense when you put the words together. The majority of the stuff I've found makes no sense at all. The ones that pick random words from a generator obviously can't help themselves. But a lot of the other ones, their authors having actually tried to write this stuff, still are completely inane.
There are some good parts I suppose. Everything has good parts. I'm intrigued by the idea of hyperlinking within the poem, to another poem. The whole tree-like effect is unique and I applaud whoever thought of it. Another is the use of random shapes or some other visual, though these are often as unnecessary as much of the text, at least it gives me something to look at while my brain slowly turns to goop. But I wonder about these things. Poems using these methods become more about the gimmick than the writing. People looking at them are drawn in by the novel ideas, not the thoughts and emotions put into the writing. Is this what their authors meant for the readers to experience?
