2.11.15

So I was driving in the car today, not listening to anything (gasp! Silence! who does that?) but I can never shut my mind up, and this bubbled to the top:

"I'm walking down the line/
that divides me somewhere in my mind/
on the border line/
of the edge and where I walk alone/

read between the lines/
what's fucked up and everything's alright"

-Green Day, from Boulevard of Broken Dreams

and it occurs to me that often as poets, we want to communicate something (about us, maybe) but don't want to say it explicitly. We could say something explicitly, and often do, but there is often something to be gained from subtlety, suggestion, and artifice. Something could be said explicitly, and you often hear that in rock music, a la Geddy Lee:

"He's got a problem with his poisons/
but you know he'll find a cure/
he's cleaning up his systems/
to keep his nature pure"

(from New World Man)

or you could say something explicitly and have it come out prose, like Mark Haddon's novel character Christopher:

"I said that wasn't clever. I was just noticing how things were, and that wasn't clever. That was just being observant. Being clever was when you looked at how things were and used the evidence to work out something new. Like a universe expanding, or who committed a murder".

-from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime

So what is my point here? While poetry can do all of the things shown in these other forms, but it also can do more. By putting straightforward words in a different syntax, physical space on the page, or order in a series (not to mention all the other devices), it can tell us more. Some of this is the reflection of the reader, some is merely asking a little extra of the audience. (Maybe this is why so many people dislike reading poetry, because it requires effort)

Maybe I'm projecting a little, but would it be so much to ask for a person to look a little harder into an individual, or spend a little more time thinking about their words or interactions on a regular basis? I'm not suggesting you compose your emails in terza rima, but wouldn't you enjoy spending a little time in reflection of the things around you, and in more than 140 characters?

I guess my homework is to find examples of boldness v subtlety and explicit vs implicit messages.