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Unread 06-12-2021, 08:03 AM
Jim Moonan Jim Moonan is offline
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This keeps bubbling up. I’ve made a few goes at responding but have never been satisfied with it, so I’ve stayed sidelined, listening to the others.

But now that it has again bubbled back up I thought it might be somewhat worthwhile to throw my half-baked thoughts on the bonfire — So here's my take (though I like Mark's better):

For something to be fresh implies it will eventually go stale, so there's that to ponder...
I think the term "fresh poetry" is a somewhat tangential, or understated, or sound-bitey way of identifying poetry that achieves a transcendent quality that is widely acknowledged. It is poetry that does not necessarily break new ground, but rather discovers the elusive deep vein that all serious artists are in quest of each time they practice their art. Fresh poetry has drunk from The Well. A crossroads where erudition and arrogance meet. Joyce was fresh. Pound not so much. Eliot vacillated.

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David Whyte, a poet and philosopher, tells of the time he was in school and an English Lit. professor walked over to one student, picked him up by the collar and pulled him close, saying, “There will be times when someone doesn’t like you, just because of the cut of your face. And there won’t be a thing you can do about it. “ Then lowered the boy back down into his seat, then said to the class, “Now let’s read Hamlet with that in mind. Because that will happen to you and you’ll be helpless to do anything about it.” (I’m paraphrasing).

But I like Mark's take (Larkin's actually). It is much more thoughtful, thorough.

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No one; nobody — no matter how learned, how experienced, how accomplished — even scratches the surface of knowing what the meaning of our existence is. It remains sealed tight, impervious to our probing and questing and stumbling for answers. Things always end unfinished. Interrupted. Oblivion has dominion over us. The best we can do is what Larkin says:

“I write poems to preserve things I have seen / thought / felt (if I may so indicate a composite and complex experience) both for myself and for others, though I feel that my prime responsibility is to the experience itself, which I am trying to keep from oblivion for its own sake. Why I should do this I have no idea, but I think the impulse to preserve lies at the bottom of all art… I believe that every poem must be its own sole freshly created universe...”

I would extend “fresh poetry” to include that the reader must also find that same freshening place the artist has led them to and drink the water.
One of my favorite games of imagination is to try to imagine what the reality of a place is like after I have left it. For example, at this very moment, what is the physical reality of The Spanish Steps in Rome, which I have been to and walked up and sat on and watched the reality of people coming and going, of flowers being sold, of gelato being enjoyed by couples and children and families and people hurrying by on the re way to and from another place, and dogs lying on the cobblestones, and couples kissing for the camera… In other words, as I sit here now in my present reality of home and a laptop and a chair, I try to imagine the actual reality of another place. I never succeed, but it does lead to some fresh thought.

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Perhaps there are different versions of “fresh”. There’s rap lyrics (fresh genre?). There’s Rupi Kaur and Amanda Gorman (fresh poets?) There Rummi (enduringly fresh poet?) Is e.e.cummings fresh? Is he still fresh now? Was Dylan Thomas ever fresh?

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Personally, I think freshness inevitably, ultimately stales, fades. There will be a time when what is fresh today becomes obscure, the language archaic, the form stiff to the point of petrification. What was once fresh eventually becomes immersed in formaldehyde for all time.

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It is not some sort of cruel, on-going joke. It is our cup runneth over. Enjoy it all. It is never-ending.

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Don’t judge me! I told you at the beginning these thoughts were half-baked! Ha!

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