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| Distressed Poet - William Hogarth |
Them vs. Us
Why is it that the featureless
Academic poets
The middle to upper classes
Professors, teachers and other
Unmoving particles
Inside the swirling dust bowl
Profess to love the classics
Both writers and poets
When many of the admired
Though far from all
Came from nothing?
The bourgeoisie know nothing of the endless
struggle
The artistic urge
The artistic urge
Like blood flow
Pushed down
Below the need
For sustenance
And the methods to reach it
To pay their rent
Among other things
Creative luxuries less
affordable
As they had no one else
To cover for them (Mummy
Syndrome).
They merely wish to be well read
To tick the boxes
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| Van Gogh |
Like Van Gogh’s perfect
sunflower
Years after the severed flesh
Lost its atoms
And vomit stains
Faded into fabric.
I never knew these artists
Yet know what it’s like to yearn
And to go without
While occasionally pondering
The value of my own contribution.
I guarantee one thing
That those artist's work
That those artist's work
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| Bukowski |
Even though we don't have the same struggles, the artist's soul is universal, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteWelcome back, my friend.
xoRobyn
I was trying to remember the author of an article, think he was a french philosopher, I read and wrote about during my masters. It was about the aesthetics of literature and who gets to decide what the cannon of great literature is. It basically said the self-appointed gate keepers of literature get to decide. So why the should we listen to them? And more importantly, what relevance does their cannon of literature or poetry, have to us?
ReplyDeleteVery well said Graham. They sit up there in their government funded Ivory Towers pouring over their Thesuras and deem to know what constitutes 'art'. Please. Same goes with all of those University Presses and Art Grant funded publications. You know the New Yorker still wont accept Bukowski as a pedigree poet because he doesn't fit their sphincter shrivelled aesthetic.
ReplyDeleteps the Poem addresses the irony that these academic stiffs follow the 'classics', many of whose work was rejected in their day by the same type of people/attitude.
ReplyDeleteWell said Anthony! A powerful poem, it must be very hard to have your work - something so personal shared from your heart - criticised, Art is so very personal I am not sure anyone has the right to to judge what is better or more worthy than the next.
ReplyDeleteI love poetry and write poetry, but I withdrew from both poetry related classes I took in school. I withdrew because both teachers said than poetry has to follow form, or it isn't worth reading.
ReplyDeleteI don't EVER want to spend my time counting instead of reading poetry. I'm not saying cadence isn't sometimes a good thing, but if I don't feel something when I read, then really, what's the point?
Exactly Pat. Its not about fanciful phrases to decipher - often for the sake of it. Being clever doesn't move people. As a poet, I want people to feel at least something, or to be able to tell a story, otherwise what's the point? It's not going to reach anybody, hence why poetry still has limited appeal because those with the power limit the type of material they publish. Keeping themselves in the game, and keeping the doors closed - perhaps that's their strategy.
ReplyDelete