The Sunday Poem: The Genius Learns about Criticism
When he first understood
That when he read a book he grasped
The meaning of it, the gestalt
(if he had known the word),
He realized he was set for life.
His family said, “You’ll be a writer
Or a teacher,” and he thought
They were the same thing,
And he said, “Cool.”
When he learned later that
The books weren’t about anything
Anymore except what the reader wanted,
He understood it. “Sunglasses,”
He said. “These are all colored sunglasses
We put on to tint the world the shade
We want, and block out what we don’t.”
And he wrote a feminist Freudian
Deconstructocryptomarxist analysis,
And saw that it was good.
The boy left high school then,
And in college got married.
After the wedding night he got up
And walked to the window expecting
The world to be vastly red or tinged
Yellow. To his great dismay
Marriage was all colors, shaded and palette
And subtle; he tried to make sense
Of the wash and spectrum,
But he had lost the knack.
Another one of those “genius” poems. As usual, the genius is, perhaps, a very smart idiot. I wrote this one near the end of graduate school, when it seemed everyone I knew was passionately attached to a point of view that colored everything in their lives. It’s not that the observation that people filter their reality isn’t true, it’s just that we grow too attached to our filters, which provides nasty shocks when we get jostled out of them by reality.
12 Responses to “The Sunday Poem: The Genius Learns about Criticism”
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Do we use these filters as a simplifying tool to get through life? To answer questions that either are too tough, or we don’t have time to answer? Time is an issue, I think. We go through life busy in the things we do to make it better. There isn’t time to be sidetracked by other issues.
Sure, they are tools of simplification — but I think the poem points out that they aren’t always applicable to the situation at hand. You may have a darn good adjustable wrench in your pocket as a tool, but when you need a hammer and only have a wrench it loses utility.
In some sense, I see this as a bit of the journey to adulthood. Many develop strong ideals and views (filters) in their school years, and then discover that the real world does not care much about such things. So they adapt their views to the real world, and then something comes up that seriously challenges those views and suddenly they are gone…
I studied PolySci in college and came out with some serious political views. The last two presidents – each in their own way – have shattered those views and assumptions about the world (filters are gone). This year I turn 35, and politicaly I am not the same guy I was at 22 when I was done with college. I’m not sure we’d recognize each other… at least politically. At 22 I was certain of many things politically. At 34 I’m certain of little beyond my lack of certainty in politics (I’ve lost the knack).
Nice poem. 🙂
Poetry is not often
Well received if it
Is just strangely formatted
prose.
Although it would seem
I’m in a
minority
in holding this view.
It would seem to me that
Odd formatting
Is only useful if it
Illuminates something in the text.
Something that pure prose
Does not reveal.
Unlikely then, that what I pen
Here will hold, in the cold
Light of Logic to be
Poetry at all.
Ironically, I would consider what you just penned to be poetry, Shan.
It’s not poetry. It’s cleverly constructed constructive criticism which is delightfully thought out and pertinent. If i may be so blatant.
A poetry debate!
I actually agree with the critique, but at least some of it was deliberate. The poem is deliberately unpoetic until the last stanza: linebreaks are awkward, the language is plain and prosy. Then when the “glasses come off” so to speak, the use of language changes:
Poetic devices here that are presumably what you are looking for: “shaded and palette and subtle”: the word “palette” itself, which is ambiguous as it can mean sharply segmented colors, a personally chosen set of colors, or a wide array of colors; the linebreak accenting “and subtle”; the linebreak at “he tried to make sense” which creates two meanings for the phrase (one if you stop at the linebreak and one if you read on); the use of recurrent s and sh sounds to mimic the “wash” and shapelessness of the world, ending with the sharply different tone of “knack.”
Of course, I also wrote it fifteen years ago; were I doing it today, there’s much I would revise in the first two stanzas. This poem did not, in fact, make it into the book I submitted as a thesis, because it didn’t make the grade.
Now, of course, a whole separate debate: there are in fact whole genres of poetry, such as prose poems and talk poetry, which are “strangely formatted prose.” 🙂
Bah. Its just a lot of ee cummings fanbois Raph 🙂
Im joking of course, I dont know enough about poetic constructs to formulate an educated opinion. I know the differance between formalistic and free form, and I know what I like when I read it. (T.S. Elliot and Garcia Lorca).
I liked the imagry of the poem, and the message, but yeah, seemed a bit “prosey” as well
I don’t think any of Raph’s works I’ve read here lately roll off my minds tongue very well. I assumed there’s some other form being used. I see a little of what you’re up to now, but it seems more a work for the practice than something finished. Kind of like making blunts to send on to make the finished product later, I guess.
Agree with you, Raph. Noticed the language change. It’s there, in the same place, in my “crit”.
I was commenting on the “well received-ness” of prose poetry, not claiming that yours wasn’t poetry!
Mine certainly isn’t, though… 🙂
“True wit is nature to advantage dressed,
what oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed”.
Pope and Kipling were on to something, with their attachment to meter and rhyme.
Whether it’s for mnemonic value or aesthetic value, there are good reasons to spend the time to follow the old forms. Even deceptively simple forms like the haiku force you to organize your thoughts and select your words much more carefully.
And even if you miss the target completely, there’s a lot of B-movie type enjoyment to be had from the resulting doggerel. 🙂
For a long time, I was only interested in formal verse as well, actually. I was partly emerging from that at the time that I did the MFA.
Given that, Jim, I’d invite you to check out this one.
And for insight into some of the patterns inherent in free verse, I think this one has some, plus the topic of the post is actually relevant to the theme of this poem.
In high school, I found myself arguing with (of all things) a jock on whether or not rap is poetry. He won, too, though admittedly, I didn’t exactly know rap.