Sunday, February 06, 2005

Dynamics in poetry

I've been thinking about dynamics, and poetry, and how punk music succeeds in creating intensity regularily though often poetry doesn't. Punk music has a reputation as being pretty flat as far as dynamics go. No so, and i'm talking about the original punk music not the derivative pop that makes a poor pass for it now. When i think of New Order's Transmisson, a John Coltrane solo, the Buzzcock's Everybody's Happy Nowadays i think of a upward curve that only ends when the song ends. It builds, and it is this build that i've been searching for in my poetry and alas it has thus aluded me so far. Maxim Gorky wrote a short story about a prisoner which i think approaches this kind of intensity, but for the most i think poetry falls short. It maybe the problem of applying a musical discourse to a poetic one. Poets have come to expect bad poetry from songwriters so why haven't i resigned myself to a dynamic flatness and intensity to poetry? It can be done and it will be something that i will always have in my consiousness. We can rebuild poetry into a dynamic song.

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