[Mary Meriam]

Manolios wrote: "I come to a poem already convinced that all good poems are primarily about poetry and only secondarily about their themes."

True or not true? What do you think?

[Michael Cantor]

I think it's one of those conveniently portentous statements that means whatever you want it to mean, so that a discussion of whether it is "true or not true" depends more on your interpretation of whatever the hell it was that Manolios said, than on the "truth" of the statement. But that won't stop anybody from trying.

[Tom Jardine]

Mary,

I don't really know, but speaking for myself, "all good poems are primarily about poetry and only secondarily about their themes" isn't true at all.

Let me use an analogy: You might already know that at the United Nations Building in NY, there is a large tapestry of Picasso's Guienica(sp?) outside on a wall in the parking lot area where the dignitaries leave, the very famous extra large black and white anti-war painting about the bombing in Spain. Well, when the present war and bombing campaign against Iraq was starting up, "they" decided to cover up! the painting because when the media camera interviewed the dignitaries the painting was in the background behind their heads. So there were scenes of leaders saying "we must bomb" with the anti-war painting in the background being broadcast to their home countries.

Point is that the message in the painting (whether anyone likes the painting or not) is still very powerful, and no one was saying the painting is about painting. Many poems do the same thing, surpass whatever form they exist by and help people see or understand or feel something.

TJ

[peter richards]

Then again, Picasso drafts the painting, making a few sketches and so on. He stretches a canvas - whatever canvas he has to hand, perhaps and perhaps on whatever frame or type of frame he is most likely to have in his studio - all this largely along the lines of the school(s) of painting in which he learned his craft. It is possible that a canvas of that size were already stretched out and he decided what to paint on it afterwards, but even so. He prepares his palette...
Obviously, the painting is 'about' an event and Picasso's reaction to it - and it works - but any painter will always see the painting in it. It's a sort of circular argument though, as I think Michael hinted. To say that any poem that does not address poetry is 'about' poetry isn't telling anyone anything.

[Lightning Bug]

.

Pity the poet Capella -
he's a homeless, orphan Tennessean.
Never a ma he could ele-
gy; he doesn't have a pa to paean.

---------
Bugsy

.

[Roger Slater]

Broadly speaking, poetry is a search for meaning and human connection. But the search for meaning and human connection is also one of the great available themes of poetry, perhaps the greatest of them all. And so poetry itself can often serve as a metaphor for one of its greatest themes. When this happens, poetry is about poetry, but only incidentally.

[Daniel Pereira]

Originally posted by Mary Meriam:
What do you think?

I think "Thomas Manolios" is a pseudonym.

Oh. About the poetry thing? What Michael Cantor said. And in addition to that: who cares what poems are about? I'm more interested in what they do.

Regards,
-Dan

[R. Nemo Hill]

There is something self-reflexive about poetry. In a certain sense, self-expression is about self no matter what it expresses. But there is also a sort of acadmic view that gets so lost in that self-reflection that it is unable to looks at things with the freshness that poetry demands. I think in general a poet need not worry about that circular angle of things - though it it is nice once in a while to look over one's shoulder and and nod knowingly. They are only words after all.

And there is a grand more overt scripture: The self-celebration of genre is a proud tradition in many disciplines. Like rock-and-roll songs about rocking and rolling, or blues songs about the blues.

Speaking of which here is one of my favorite instances of that. I don't know how many of you are familiar with Portuguese fado music? In Portuguese the word fado is a felicitously loaded one, referring to its own musical tradition, but also meaning fate or destiny - so that when one sings the classically self-conscious anthems about fado itself, the music, the lyrics take on an added dimension. As here for instance:

Tudo isto existe
Tudo isto e triste
Tudo isto e fado

All this exists
All this is sad
All this is fado.

[pardon my loose translation and lack of diacriticals]

Nemo



[This message has been edited by R. Nemo Hill (edited February 20, 2006).]

[Mary Meriam]

What Roger said, and thank you for saying it, Roger.

I am wondering too - who is Manolios, and what did he mean? Are you around, Manolios?

Dan, what do poems do? Or what should they do?

Nemo, thanks for the fado instruction! Is it pronounced fade-oh or fad-o?

Mary

[R. Nemo Hill]

fad-oo