a poetics blog finally. started putting my longpoem writings in to ms word too. this was inspired by an old friend from high school who writes poems. he posted a short poem, and this was my comment.

ah the short poem.

much to be learned Mr.—

there is something your poem lacks ( i think of the two most exceptional examples of short poems that come to mind). because the language is so limited one must put more emphasis on content context and image. the two poems i’m referring two come from the Modernist Era in American Poetry.

William Carlos Williams’ “The Red Wheelbarrow”

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

and Ezra Pound’s “IN A STATION OF THE METRO”

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

here’s wiki analysis of what i’m speaking about Pound : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_a_Station_of_the_Metro

Williams: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Wheelbarrow

anyway, what both poems do is they place a different context to each general image “train station” and “wheelbarrow”. for example the first lines of Williams’ call in to question the importance of the wheelbarrow “so much /depends”. we don’t associate that kind of importance or urgency with a wheelbarrow, so we’re then left to ask “why is this so important?”. The best part about the poem is it doesn’t give anything away. We’re left to put our own interpretation in to that question.

The Pound works in another way. Associating a general common area (the subway [and its crowd]) with a bough. even here it might seem that our interpretations are limited towards the negative (after all, Pound chose “black” as his color) however, a bough is very much like the connectedness of the people in the crowd (separate stems connected by one whole).

so yes. this wasn’t terribly influenced by college. my own pursuits mostly. i’m also not suggesting you have to write like that. being the varying possibilities of language and interpretation there is certainly no reason you can’t do it different. it just helps to be conscious of this things. not writing towards “meaning” but writing towards variations.