bad poetry and good
i was recently asked to ghostwrite
another blog. according to the author,
this is a perfectly reasonable request
because "all [i] do is steal [my] [material]
from [her] all the time anyway!!"
i refused, but promised to at least
give credit where credit is due,
for this great quote she found
in sound and sense. perrine
via carles, tells it like it is
for your general edification:
And here, perhaps, we should discuss the kinds of poems that most frequently "fool" inexperienced readers (and occasionally a few experienced ones) and sometimes achieve tremendous popularity without winning the respect of most good readers. These poems are frequently published on greeting cards or in anthologies entitled Poems of Inspiration, Poems of Courage, or Heart-Throbs. The people who write such poems and the people who like them are often the best of people, but they are not poets or lovers of poetry in any genuine sense. They are lovers of conventional ideas or sentiments or feelings, which they like to see expressed with the adornment of rime and meter, and which, when so expressed, they respond to in predictable ways.
posted by self_invasion | 7:30 PM
1 Comments:
"...rime..." I love it! This is exactly what encrusts these verses of sentiment.
There was this one-off diddy of a song on a radio show (not PHC, but some local show with local talent broadcast live from a local tavern/grill in Wallingford) the lyrics of which simultaneously explained and demonstrated that the great popularity of Country Western music was the fact that it was so predictable in it's rhymes and melodic phrasing that it was possible to "sing along" to a song one was hearing for the first time! It was a very, very clever lyric.
And this, I believe, may be some of the attraction of greeting card poetry. It is so overwhelmingly predictable in its construction and tempo that the card's reader is made comfortable by the knowledge that there will be no surprises in the next line. Dove will be followed by Love. No doubt about it and all's right with the world, then.
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