09-02-2012, 10:09 AM
Poetry is art, or it's the voice of a beast raging in the willderness. I'm a beast raging in the wilderness: does that diminish my voice? 'Poet' means 'maker'; if I can't experience a shared reality, I have to create my own reality every moment in progressive momentum. There might be stuff that could be in a box, but I don't think there is a box.
As for education, just another Hell. For me, anyway. I had such severe learning disabilities by the time I was thirteen that I flunked out of school, I couldn't learn how to swim, or ride a bike; and for some reason, I was associated with some kind of devil. So I spent years alone reading the same book over and over until I could understand it. From there I went on to another then another. And the system I used was magic. I embraced that "demonic" stigma people loved to stick on me. Now it haunts me everywhere I go, everything I do. Nothing but nightmares and psychoses and loss. But over the years I was able to contain it and hide it.
So what do I not like about poetry? The same things I don't like about life in general. But me, I'm not making art to be arty. My poetry is literally real to me, not metaphor. I'm creating reality, not like a politician or a clergyman, but like a poet. "Good" or "great" or "bad", those things are incidental. Sometimes I can try to explain what was going through my mind when I was expressing something, so someone can take that into consideration in connection with a poem. But to me, everything is a poem, even the dirt between my toes has some human element that is spiritual. I want people to understand what I'm saying, but if I could express all of what I put into a poem in prose then it wouldn't be the same poem.
As for education, just another Hell. For me, anyway. I had such severe learning disabilities by the time I was thirteen that I flunked out of school, I couldn't learn how to swim, or ride a bike; and for some reason, I was associated with some kind of devil. So I spent years alone reading the same book over and over until I could understand it. From there I went on to another then another. And the system I used was magic. I embraced that "demonic" stigma people loved to stick on me. Now it haunts me everywhere I go, everything I do. Nothing but nightmares and psychoses and loss. But over the years I was able to contain it and hide it.
So what do I not like about poetry? The same things I don't like about life in general. But me, I'm not making art to be arty. My poetry is literally real to me, not metaphor. I'm creating reality, not like a politician or a clergyman, but like a poet. "Good" or "great" or "bad", those things are incidental. Sometimes I can try to explain what was going through my mind when I was expressing something, so someone can take that into consideration in connection with a poem. But to me, everything is a poem, even the dirt between my toes has some human element that is spiritual. I want people to understand what I'm saying, but if I could express all of what I put into a poem in prose then it wouldn't be the same poem.