How Primitive

[tectak]

It's poetry all right. Doesn't need much fixing up. I'm in a decent mood.

Only it seems to me that poetry isn't a bandage. As persuasive as your writing here is, I don't believe it. That doesn't mean your poem doesn't work. It does work, and I suspect some will believe it. Really, I just don't agree with it. Don't want to.

It's nice how you use the metaphor stanza as a kind of bridge. Not to get complicated, I won't say anything else about that part. In the world of this poem, it is very good.

Thanks for posting your reactions.

---

"How primitive this working of the word that a patch on the wound
of life may be had"

This sentence doesn't seem to make sense, probably because it isn't really a sentence, just two dependent clauses. I wonder what the "wound of life" is?"wound of life" = "vale of tears"

"Inevitably the suppurating sore sloughs the bandage away exposing again
tender, defenseless humanity to driving, grating, blasting sand that is physical existence"

Ah, a sentence. Seems a bit melodramatic though. Of course I am old and no longer so overflowing with angst as I was when I was younger. So I can understand, yet I do not comprehend Not certain if you are wanting clarification but yeah, it is inelegantly stuffed with posey.


"Will there be no need of metaphor on the other side?"

Whoa, that was a sudden jump, blind-sided by the afterlife.


"I lay a bit more mud and straw wattle upon this rent, burst, breathing body
and wait to learn a healing truth"

What the "rent", and what the "wound"?
no answer yet does make men swoon.
"And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?"

That is to say, I feel this "suppurating sore" is poorly defined, in that it is not defined at all.


---------------------------------------------
Seriously, I do remember writing things like this, probably while drinking a bottle of cheap wine (Sangria, with the wicker bottom) shortly after my girlfriend dumped me... but I think I am too far removed from that time to make any kind of legitimate comment. As Wordsworth said, "only the good die young".


Dale

"Rent is an alternate form of "torn".

I want to say thanks for all of your comments.

---

How primitive
this working of the word

that a patch on the wound
of life
may be had


Inevitably
the suppurating sore
sloughs the bandage away

exposing again
tender, defenseless humanity
to driving, grating, blasting sand
that is physical existence


Will there be no need
of metaphor
on the other side?


I lay a bit more mud and straw wattle
upon this rent, burst, breathing body
and wait to learn
a healing truth

Desperately wishing to appear stylistically poetic is the only reason for omitting punctuation, meter, flow, rhyme...and, of course, subjecting the receptive reader to random line breaks and stanzas determined by pointless enjambment. No. It is NOT poetry any more

than is this critique
which by the same devices
can be made

to look like poetry
but who is fooled
by looks alone?

As has been pointedly remarked on already, it is difficult to write poetry about poetry. This proves it.
Best,
tectak

Yeah, I get what you mean.
Who (author) or what (piece) would you recommend as good examples?

Thanks, Nick

Oh, let me see now...an example of how difficult it is writing poetry about poetry...hmmm....Ah yes...there is one on this very site by nick, entitled "How primitive"
Very best,
tectak