Thursday, June 12, 2008

Dear Mr. Frost

Dear Mr. Frost,

I slapped some words
  on a page today
  and called it
  a poem.

I know you wouldn't approve,
  but you are dead
  and I
    am not.



        -Jim

2 comments:

Brett said...

Do you really think he wouldn't approve? I know little of Frost, but I think he might, at least in some way.

Jim DuBois said...

I read an interview with Robert Frost where he was complaining about "modern" poets (I think Allen Ginsberg, etc) just slapping down words without thinking. He was a very meticulous poet who went over his poems many many times.

In the same book as that interview were interviews with other poets, including Allen Ginsberg. Some poets were more uptight about what they were doing, some of them were more picky than others, some had a looser definition of poetry and so forth. A lot of personality goes into a poem.

I dislike a picky attitude, but at the same time I don't like sloppy writing. I really like expressiveness and spontaneity. I like Jack Kerouac's idea of spontaneous writing.

I also like this part of Haiku: it comes to you, you say it, you are done. It was perfect. No revising.

-Jim