Posted by Ron Price I bring you a certain darkness in which I labour Ron Price Link: Pioneering Over Four Epochs
on 7/11/2004, 12:46 pm
203.103.100.195
ACCEPTING UNKNOWINGNESS
I suspect that the greatest poetry is, as a rule...a concise and simple way of saying great things...this does not necessarily mean un-complex or easy to understand. Not everything or everyone is always concise and simple; even the simplest souls have complex moments. -With appreciation to John Livingston Lowes and C.Day Lewis in The World of Poetry, Phoenix House, London, 1959, pp.133-134.
Youre not looking for some top-40 tune here,
or a delightful ditty like:
What shall we do with a drunken sailor?
Some easy style, light reading,
a little amusement, to be taken over breakfast
with your morning paper, come on mate!
What do you take me for? Im not a comedian
with a quick fix, instant laugh, insight guaranteed.
to enshroud you, certain fluctuations and associations
which I melt down for your purpose and make distant
for you to reach for: buy those spectacles,
for this is no dead vacuum, floundering place, dimness.
You must cultivate your poetic receptivity,
accept unknowingness when it comes, as you would
in those mysterious places, the faces of friends,
those you love and associates you hardly know.
20 September 1995
Message Thread:
« Back to thread