8.18.2011

sane over strange

I favor a poetry that proves itself sane over the poetry that is patently strange.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

So ... you're with J. V. Cunningham?

For My Contemporaries

How time reverses
The proud in heart!
I now make verses
Who aimed at art.

But I sleep well.
Ambitious boys
Whose big lines swell
With spiritual noise,

Despise me not!
And be not queasy
To praise somewhat:
Verse is not easy.

But rage who will.
Time that procured me
Good sense and skill
Of madness cured me.

Not that he was not also strange. But I wonder if the cure wasn't worse than the disease....

Andrew Shields said...

The key part of the phrase is "proves itself sane": it may seem strange but turns out to be sane?

But there's also something for things that look sane but prove themselves strange. My favorite example is Robert Frost's "The Mountain."

vazambam (Vassilis Zambaras) said...

Who knows if

there is a cure-
all for all
this in

sanity. :>?