Dixon's Forum Posts from Dixon

Thinking to rescue Poetry from its own reclusion, proselytizing the radical (I now know, since I know I’m not a poet, but did not know then, when I thought I was a poet) revelation that Poetry had abdicated its responsibility to touch as many lives deeply as possible by deliberately downplaying mass appeal, and has narrowed its audience by overuse of the Free Form, but an enhanced emphasis on Structure could turn the situation around forthwith, and Poetry could grow to a great force, beside Music even, in sending out the calls.

(When I thought I was a poet, I thought it was the poets’ role to widely say important things, and I thought I had important things to widely say, I did, when I thought I was a poet, yes, yes.)

This is one of my earliest pieces, designed to sound the alarm, back when I first got it stuck in my head that the other poets thought just like me, and they would jump on the bandwagon and rouse the rabble, and Poetry would reach more people if only it returned to its recognized roots in rhythm and rhyme:

Introduction

Solo

Duet

Song
fills like sunshine
the hills and shadowvales
of Life.

Song
steals like sunshine
around meander trails
of Life.

Solo

Duet

Song
steals like sunshine
icicle rafter-tails
of Life.

Song
feels like sunshine
on spangled snowdrift trails
of Life.

Solo

Though they don’t stick out like sore thumbs, the first two solo stanzas rhyme one another, sideways-like, sort of.    Then the last stanza half-rhymes, double-rhymes, near-rhymes, sideways-rhymes in upon itself.    The Free Form parts, full of symbolic imagery, stand-alone, came out pretty structured, crammed into duets.    I wonder what I did a goofy thing that for?    (Both the Un and Structured parts say kind and un things of one another, mixed-feelings like.)

Any plan that requires human total coöperation is doomed to failure.

Poesy means the art or practice of composing poems, by the way.    Thought using some obscure word correctly might appeal to the unstructured fan intelligentsia, totally befuddled when the politest commentary it received were blank blinks.

That wasn’t very funny either.

Every day, you learn something new that you never need to know again.

I believed, when I thought I was a poet, that poetry’s structure lends an effectiveness like no other verbal form, excepting Music itself (excepting Song is a part of Poetry) to stimulating thought and feeling.

Also thought most everybody else must feel the same way (noddly-bobbles confirmed it!), and that Poetry, if it showed more structured work, would be more popular and therefore touch more lives more deeply like it’s s’posed to.

Eagerly striving to accomplish that, when I thought I was a poet  . . .