Ok. Ok,
Jessica . Here are my answers to the poetry meme. I wanted to reply earlier, but life has been pretty hectic lately and somehow it is already Christmas. Argh. Plus, I'm pretty down about poetry these days
The first poem I remember reading was... The Dream Poem by Michael deBeyer and that was at age 22. I’m a late bloomer.
I was forced to memorize numerous poems in school and... I don’t remember any of them. I don’t remember being forced to memorize poems at all in fact. The benefit of going to a public school in a smallish town I guess.
I read poetry because... I write it. I don’t read very much poetry these days. Most of what I have read I haven’t liked. The things I used to like, up until even a year ago, don’t interest me anymore and I’m casting around for some things to replace them. A lot of the poetry I find seems derivative of the poetry published in the last century and frankly I’m bored with much of it. There’s something archaic about the politics that lead to much of that poetry, a type of reading that was politically necessary coming through the 1980’s in North America that doesn’t feel subtle enough anymore to address the complexity of our current circumstances. I’m being purposely vague because I haven’t yet had a chance to really sit down and grapple with my feelings on this subject in a direct way, but that’s where my head is at. I didn’t even write about more ‘traditional’ representational poetry because almost all of that bores me. Almost. I’m not really interested in dividing poetry up into distinct realms that I either like or dislike.
A poem I'm likely to think about when asked about a favorite poem... Any of Ted Berrigan’s sonnets.
I write poetry, but... That’s weird. I write poetry, and I’m interested in loads of things. I enjoy making noise and messy visual poetry. I like to paint things on cardboard sometimes. I play a lot of World of Warcraft.
My experience with reading poetry differs from my experience with reading other types of literature... I’m also bored by a lot of other literature these days. So I guess it doesn’t differ all that much.
I find poetry... everywhere. While working at Sears in the maintenance department I would find poetry in the noises that the various mechanical devices I had to maintain would produce. I found poetry while sleeping on the roof and would send recordings of it through my cell phone to my answering machine at home to later record to my computer to manipulate with software.
The last time I heard poetry... was during the bill bissett tribute. Great to see McCaffery read again.
I think poetry is like... the bastard offspring of a utility-centric language (this includes poetry written to convey a message or that elaborates a concept through the use of literary devices.)
