"Poemy" voice

[Luckieman]

When reading and listening to poems, like music, dreaming, socializing of any sort,
it's pleasant to slide your leftbrain into your rightbrain
and let it enjoy a long, lifelong, bath,
like Hotei lounging by a brook or larger stream in the piedmont slants of the Big Rock Candy Mountains.

 


Actually, yes.  This.  Exactly this. ^^^



—-

I don’t think there is anything wrong with writing “in a poemy voice.” I’m not sure I understand the question? Why is it bad if a poem sounds like a poem? Music is always expected to sound like music.

To my rather ancient mind, 'poemy' means no more than using words and imagery that have been proved to work for readers in the past. I fear that many modern writers are so wrapped up in the art and craft of writing that they forget the reader. This seems particularly the case in poetry, which is why modern poetry has limited interest for the public at large (ask any general bookshop manager). Being original (in the sense of doing something nobody has done before) is in reality well nigh impossible given the couple of million years hominids have been thinking, other than by being intentionally incomprehensible which seems futile. The ideal for me is to express an idea that resonates with the reader (i.e. something they can directly relate to already) in an unexpected but appropriate way - a new angle on a recognisable idea.

And yes, music is at least usually expected to sound like music, but the ultra modern squwarks brigade still promote formless atonal wailings and thumpings, and John Cage famously thought he was being very clever by dispensing with sound altogether. I remember a wonderful satirical critique of two performances of 4'33", one of which was apparently head and shoulders better than the other. Is this the kind of bull we want to embrace? Or are we trying to speak to our public in ways they'll understand and appreciate? There's lovely line in the Bogart movie Deadline - U.S.A. in which the ace editor (Bogie) says to a rookie that journalism is a 'profession'. When asked to explain he says: "A profession is a perfomance for public good". To my mind, so is poetry.