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 A place for discussion on poetry, reviews, contests, etc. |
"The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be." ~ Douglas Adams in "The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time" How does it feel to travel 1,000 miles an hour strapped to your easy chair by the force of gravity? Did not even notice, did you? That is because you, the surface of the earth, and the atmosphere around you are all traveling at precisely the same speed. The resulting perception is that we are standing still. As a young boy, I often knelt beside a stream and gazed in wonder at the brilliant colors on pebbles in the rippling water. The extent of my universe ranged all of five miles into the small town where my mom took me to buy a new pair of shoes every year. Later, I lay for hours on the deck of Uncle Packy's boat house, captivated by the fish nibbling at bread crumbs dropped through cracks between the boards. During a trip to the Military Academy at West Point, NY, while considering options for college, my dad pulled off at an observation point overlooking the Rip Van Winkle Bridge, and we had a little chat about values while marveling at the flaming panorama of autumn foliage stretched out across the Hudson River valley below us. My horizons were expanding. A week before my eighteenth birthday, my parents bid me fond adieu, put me on an airplane, and sent me out into the world. I was off to college at Auburn University. During the flight in a two-engine puddle-jumper from Atlanta, GA, to Montgomery, AL, we flew low enough that I could see the landscape beneath us. A strange network of red lines sprawled through green Georgia pines covering the land, like varicose veins. The ride from Montgomery to Auburn took me across flat land blanketed with white cotton fields. It was a far cry from the rolling Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts, where I was born and raised. I felt as if I had been uprooted and deposited in an alien land. The social turmoil during that period reinforced that perception. After graduation, I was commissioned in the U. S. Navy, who stretched the range of my universe from the Big Apple to Hong Kong. Through the years, I have continued sailing miles across time and distance, meeting many people, challenges and opportunities. In 1969, Neil Armstrong described the earth as a "tiny pea, pretty and blue," which could be obscured by his thumb as he looked down upon us during his mission to the moon. Today, I can see Mars as a bright speck in the night sky and then go inside, turn on my computer and view images sent down from the Mars rover Curiosity, which show vivid scenes of the sprawling landscape up close and personal, bringing to mind the alien terrain I saw during my first voyage on the way to Auburn. http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/24/tech/mars-curiosity-anniversary/ Perceptions may change with advanced knowledge and understanding, but that wonderful sense of mystery and intrigue about the universe around us remains intact. ***** "A shift in perspective makes the particles in your universe dance to new possibilities." ~ Annie Kagan in "The Afterlife of Billy Finger" Art happens in two places: in poets' minds as they create it, and in readers' minds as they perceive it. Poets explore possibilities through a lens colored by past experience and shares them with an unseen audience. They call upon a unique reservoir of such enlightenment, conceptual skill and innovative research to project some spiritual sensation upon the screen of the audience's imagination--be it joy, melancholy, shock, or any of a thousand others. Nothing more than schizophrenic hypnotists with multiple personalities, they hear many voices rattling around in their heads--the muse, the critics, fictional characters, pixies in their fantasies, teachers, moms, dads--while trying to mesmerize readers and manipulate their emotional experience, like some stand-up comedian with a variety of impersonations. They use their skill with words to make the reader temporarily suspend a natural tendency to question and disbelieve. In this manner, poets employ an intimate examination and understanding of the human spirit to capture the essence of some particular element in a momentary revelation. ***** "Too often...we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." ~ John F. Kennedy in Yale University Commencement address (June 11, 1962) No matter how private the creative process itself might be, a finished piece of writing posted or published is usually meant to be a form of public communication. It is the reviewer's job to help make that communication as effective as possible. Just as a writer approaches his work from a number of different perspectives during the creation of his precious brainchild, so a critic must wear several hats in the process of analyzing and delivering constructive feedback: First, he is a reader, enjoying the company of the author, his narrator and the various characters involved in the tale or poem. He soaks up the ambience and interacts vicariously with all the actors entangled in the narrative. Secondly, as a student of the craft, the analyst observes how a writer achieves specific effects to lure a reader into the realm of his imagination. He studies how the writer applies various techniques to keep his audience engaged in what is happening and takes notes for future reference. Finally, the reviewer is a teacher, who recognizes that there is no such thing as one absolutely correct form for any sentence or line of poetry. There are merely forms which may be more or less clear, more or less forceful, more or less pleasant to eye and ear. When I review a piece of work, I take an objective point of view, breaking it down into basic components and analyzing the effectiveness of each element. As I try to communicate my observations to the author, the roles are reversed, and I become the writer. I usually use the third person voice to avoid a sense of personal confrontation, focusing on the work rather than the author. The ultimate goal of both the writer and the reviewer is to create the impression of spontaneous authenticity. The writer's blood, sweat and tears produced in this process should be completely invisible, so the reader can more clearly perceive the emotional connection with what is happening in the story or poem. If a reviewer talks about how well a piece of my work is written, I have not done my job of hypnotism properly. I would rather hear about the emotional reaction evoked. Spine-chilling shivers and chair-tipping laughter are good things. Your assignment:Write a poem about the concept of change. Let the creativity flow from your soul!  Dave "The Poet's Place "  |
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