My heart is refuse

[joel]

My heart is refuse: I am not the one
who loves you; I am not the one whose word
is kept, I love you. Yet you seem unmoved
and resolute in happinesses found
apart from me and promises from long
since lovely moments when we chose to trust –
yes – love is faithful, an immortal god—
but dreams of immortality are odd
and angry friends for love today and rust
away to brittle shrapnel like a song
of blood-red longing lost to waste around
a somehow stagnant certainty: unloved
as we by one another are, my word –
my truth, I love you – falls a truth undone.

[Perdida]

As Hester, said in reply to one of your poems in another thread, when she reads you "I fly" and yes, so do I. So do I.

I feel as though i am reading the great Dylan Thomas when i read you.



P

[Lightning Rod]

beautiful craft, joel
but I want to weep and play violin
subject matter, subject matter
too mushy
can you take this?
I'm only trying to be helpful

[stilltrucking]

If it is Ich and Du
how mushy can we get.

I have come to the conclusion that god could care less what happens to me.

But I read joel as if he is singing to some larger life than human.

but what do I know about poetry.

I always feel like I am reading Martin Buber when I read joel.

[Doreen Peri]

Absolutely stunning poetry!

I love it!

thank you, joel!

[robertsnw2]

i've read a few of your poems here, and this one i read aloud, too meself and the painted walls, and it rung, it bounced and came back to me, it stunned my ears and quickened my blood. A problem i've always found with writing, poetry esp. is breaking up lines, my lines rarely break unless the thought pattern is changed, and when reading i naturally break lines instead of slurrying them together, your lines need to only be broken for breath. Good poem

[joel]

too mushy: yuppers.

i totally agree...when i write, my feet are shackled by meter, rhyme and form (haha: feet / meter) and my hands are shackled by my INFPish desperate devotion to idealistic (hopefully not idealized) Love.

i enjoy a kind word as much as the next folk, but when i read dylan thomas, he's not hung up on broken hearts and lost lusts that may be more but may be less... and when i read great poetry (and in so much of what i read here) i am awestruck by the lack of I-ness. but i'm still in the I trenches. even when i push myself to try to look at something outside my own experience (i hope no one thinks i'm actually into perpetrating/glorifying domestic (or other) violence) it comes out in first person.

i agree with the too mushy crowd, but on the other hand, i feel compelled to explore how to explain something so profound as Love...especially when it's something so profound that its profundity is hackneyed.

His facial muscles, devastated, fell
to desperation’s grimace with a scowl
and scornful, puckered press of lips: a kiss
goodbye for loveliness as stubborn as
the hairy ass it so resembled. And
he chuckled eulogies for sentiment.
This one most holy venture, this devout
and danger-laden cause: what’s love about,
in truth, if what defies embellishment
because of all its depth is panned
by critics— "mushy, sentimental"— has
its regal robes removed since such as this,
as love, is clothed in mere cliché? And foul
his face admitted: Love is versed to hell.

thanks for conversation...i don't get this rest of the week with my 6-9 year old campers. peace out.

[judih]

it is my experience that the more i sink into the 'i', the more i speak to others.
wail not your eye, joel, wail heart
(i loved this one, too)

[stilltrucking]

Well I'll be dipped!
you mean it was about a woman?

I should never comment on poetry or music

[Doreen Peri]

I don't agree with the too-mushy crowd. And there isn't a "crowd," btw. Just one person said that.

Critics.

I don't take too kindly to criticism, myself, especially when it's all so subjective and when the critics themselves write material with the same type of themes they are criticizing.

Glad to see you on your camp break, joel.

[joel]

thanks all...

and i don't mind criticism. i'm all about reader-response, so its nice to hear it now and then...keeps me honest. personally, i do think this is too mushy, but i also think mushy is sometimes the way life roles. they're not always about a woman or a man, or about holy love, or Holy Love, or flat out animal sex...but sometimes they are. usually in my head they overlap--and i try to avoid too much concreteness so i'm not locked into something when i come back.

my grandmother was more formative and precious to me than i can express and years later, i do not believe she's dead. it pains me beyond belief to make new friends or to talk to people who didn't know or love her--how can i possibly explain and transmit to someone the depth of her love or the genuine goodness of her spirit? i can't--and it tears at my soul to even admit that. how can a person in whom my world found its deepest understanding, whom i loved in such a basic and necessary way, be unknown and unloved by anyone? i can't do it--but i can't not avoid trying either. and since that's my place of greatest rapture, deepest longing and most dreaded loss, that's where i figure i need to drop my pen (for me, hence the I-ness).

wow. so now that i've taken the time to turn this into my personal writers anonymous meeting, i'm gonna stop and go to bed. i'll leave on a note of personal thanks for being a union welcoming enough to let me post this.

[Doreen Peri]

I disagree with those who say that writing poetry in the first person is ineffective and autobiographical. Actually, whether it be autobiographical or not, doesn't matter. What matters is universality.

We are all an "I." Each and every one of us. And when we read anything in the first person, whether it be a poem, a narrative, a novel, an essay, we automatically put ourselves, as readers, into the author's voice and become the "I" speaking.

"I" can be an extremely effective voice for sharing what it's like to be human (universally) and also allow the reader to (pardon my pun), see through the poet's I's.

Many well-respected poets throughout history have used the first person voice. Shakespeare's sonnets are all written in first person, for instance. Here is an essay about the use of "I" in the sonnets.
http://www.about-shakespeare.com/sonnets.php
NOt saying that I agree with everything said in this essay, just saying that obviously Shakespeare knew what he was doing and his sonnets are treasured well-respected classical poetry.

And MANY other well-respected poets OFTEN used first-person POV. Walt Whitman, TS Eliot, Wordsworth, Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost, Dorothy Parker, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, just to list a few from different eras.

Honestly, I think MOST well-regarded poets have used first-person (some of them use that voice almost exclusively) and those who say that using "I" in a poem doesn't make for a good poem, are just wrong!

And you're right... it's very difficult to express the depth of Love (our most precious gift) in words.

Love is the epitome of human relation. It is glorious and holy and almost incomprehensible; it is heavenly and mystical, confusing and blissful.

Let me see through your "I's," Joel. Keep doing what you're doing.

[Lightning Rod]

doreen, you forgot ee cummings
who saw the world through lower case i's

and I believe joel takes my comments in the spirit in which they were offered
it's no secret that I think he is a fine writer
but that's just my critical opinion


"These words don't make me a poet.
These Eyes (I's) make me a poet."--Lrod

[Doreen Peri]

I donno what happened to stilltrucking's comment which came after yours. I guess he decided to delete it?

Anyway, it was about line breaks. I just wanted to say that in my opinion, line breaks are one of the most important parts of the craft of writing poetry.

And yeah, I agree with robertsnow that line breaks often indicate breaths.

Poetry is a spoken art, not just a written art. It needs to be heard.