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The Blue Space

Submitted by fink555 on Mon, 2017-06-05 17:21

In most spaces the blue won’t hurt you;
the endless sky
will seem an unending beacon
akin to a never-ending bird
or simply an overfull pail.
In other spaces it will function as an x ray
baring your insides to all passerby
whether you notice or not.
The smaller they get, the more they seem
like small chinks in a prison half invisible,
a parable glued to shadow.
In the very rare spaces you will move
as a tired stranger might
aware of this horrible enormity,
this dislocated enmity
and find how small and without reality you are
in this origami puzzle
this imprisoning infinite with end.

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Comments

scribbler

Mon, 2017-06-05 17:54

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Welcome to neopoet. The first thing that pops up is it should be "passersby" Likely just a typo. Thin write has pretty good bones and potential but it reads more like barely poetic prose than poetry to me. But then I'm an old guy who thinks all poetry should employ some poetic devices lol. This has so much to say that I hope you take the time to stand back, read it and then make it worthy of the message it contains. BTW I Did enjoy reading it...........stan

lovedly

Mon, 2017-06-05 17:54

lovedly's picture

you may join
the free verse
obscurantism poetry
let's be creative
younger blue genes
in darker bluer jeans
ones

Geezer

Mon, 2017-06-05 18:18

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agree with Stan. This has a lot of things going for it. However, the little niggles detract from it.[Unending beacon akin to a never ending bird?] Unless it is what Lovedly calls Obscurantism poetry and the meaning is REALLY obscure, take a little time to flesh this out and it will develop into a really good work. ~ Geezer.
.

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fink555

Mon, 2017-06-05 21:25

fink555's picture

is actually a school, or whatever you want to call it, of poetry that has poetic devices in it but doesn't exclusively rely on them--clark coolidge would be an example. i make a habit of writing poetic prose. i don't consider anything about this obscure--we've all had this experience i think on certain "blue sky" days probably--but thank you

author comment

Eumolpus

Tue, 2017-06-06 11:37

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You obviously have a command of language, and are a poet.

To me is your poem is like abstract painting. I used to own a large textile studio, and abstract art was a perfect reference for fabric designs, but it had no "meaning" other than experiments in color, shape, composition. It was purely decorative, without theme, or relationship to the "real" world. I had no emotional response to it, other than studies in colors and shapes. What might look good on a blouse or a dress.

For abstract poetry, to me it's about the music of words, like Mallarme. In your poem, which is more prosaic than musical, is it about the experience of reading the poem, and to allow the word play to take out out of our reality into some other reality?
Whereas you don't consider anything here obscure, I find most of it that way; a never-ending bird, a parable glued to shadow, an imprisoning infinite with end...these are very abstract to me. They have "half-meanings" to my consciousness, I'm left with a vague sense of their reality. The raison d'etre of the poem seems to be how small and without reality we are. But from the onset, that the blue won't "hurt" me...I keep trying to feel what that means...I just can't.

I think it's good for a poet to have an "ars poetica" in mind. Is it just the experience of the reading that you have in mind? There is no comment I, the reader, can make, suggesting different words, meter. There is a purpose this poem has that eludes me. Would you consider a few words to help me grasp this type of poetry.
I put some time and thought into this, and please receive these thoughts as they were intended,
as one trying to comprehend and appreciate this work.

Eumolpus
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
ee cummings

fink555

Tue, 2017-06-06 13:16

fink555's picture

agree with you: I always thought of my poems as abstract paintings, or tiny boxes, etc etc. Mallarme absolutely, a poet I really admire just did a new translation of him. What I am intending to in this poem is use another world to refer to this one, and how in the midst of even the busiest day we can be in another, so to speak, just by tripping a simple mental wire. it is that easy. i would characterize the poetry i write as arcane, experimental while being absolutely practical; i am trying to get to the reader while leaving things as they usually are in poetry. it is a strategy.

i mean the blue, as in the blue sky. we always refer to it as "beautiful" but this probes why.

sorry if i did not describe it adequately, but i am trying.

author comment

wesley snow

Tue, 2017-06-06 14:59

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but I agree it borders on poetic prose. That may be the intention here. Otherwise, I liked it a great deal.

W. H. Snow

A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. Percy Bysshe Shelley

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fink555

Tue, 2017-06-06 18:37

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that there's anything wrong with poetic prose

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scribbler

Tue, 2017-06-06 19:34

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you did not take my comment as being a stab at poetic prose which can be difficult because it so easily can become either prose or poetry before the author realizes it

fink555

Tue, 2017-06-06 23:06

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"Which one of us has not dreamed, on ambitious days, of the miracle of a poetic prose: musical, without rhythm or rhyme; adaptable enough and discordant enough to conform to the lyrical movements of the soul, the waves of revery, the jolts of consciousness?
Above all else, it is residence in the teeming cities, it is the crossroads of numberless relations that gives birth to this obsessional ideal."

Charles Baudelaire

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