'If you could ban one form of poetry what would it be and why?'

I was asked this today and I have various reasons why I dislike some forms of poetry but in my opinion they make the good forms look better just by being so bad. So I now as the same question to all of you!



That's right, you sitting there looking at the screen and reading this.

In general, I try not to stick my head above the parapet by offering an opinion that could be shown to be incredibly stoopid - but I couldn't resist this one - so here goes...

I wouldn't ban any form of poetry, prose, or any other form of artistic self-expression - no matter how awful I, personally, thought it was.
I am generally and emphatically against censorship of the written word; and, it seems to me, that those who set themselves up as the arbiters of good taste and form are most often the least able to decide. Didn't Hitler, Stalin, and other assorted 'aesthetes', decide what could be read or written?

It's certainly a good point, but I the question wasn't asked in the light of censorship, rather more like room 101. Although room 101 is/was a censorship idea...hmmmm. Censorship only reflects a minority's lack of confidence in society as a whole.

I'm not sure I agree with 'Censorship ONLY reflects a minority's lack of confidence in society as a whole.' - I think it is a active effort to control the behaviour, and usually - the thoughts, of said society ..... again, often by those least qualified to make those decisions.

But in the interests of Room 101 - I'm not overly keen on limericks.... unless the writer is under 8 years old - in which case - well done! very clever!

Martin, Room 101 was not a censorship idea. It was the torture room which Winston Smith was taken to in the Ministry of Love at the end of Orwell's 1984. The room was designed to administer to the victim their very worst fear in the world. In Winston's case it was rats; a cage of them was strapped to his face.
'Putting things into Room 101', in terms of the TV series, is a bit of a distortion of the novel's idea. But it basically means 'What do you hate the most?' in this context. I accept that guests on the series were supposed to be getting rid of their most hated objects on the show (hence, censorship) but I think the phrase 'Room 101' should primarily be used to refer to an aspect of one of the greatest works of fiction of the twentieth century, not a fitfully funny TV show.
We are discussing this on a website devoted to literature, after all.

cjd, in defence of the limerick, I will post one here that is not particularly silly or bawdy (although I have written those too) but aims to make a serious satircal point. It follows on from mentions of Hitler. And I am over eight years of age.

The Myths of Biological
Determinism #1

Although some Berlin bars barred barbarians
On account of them not being Aryans
In fact, I have heard
That barbarian, the word
Was the Roman term for the Bavarians

Linguistically, this is a true story. The word 'barbarian' came from Roman soldiers hearing the ancient Germanic language and thinking it just sounded to them like 'bar bar bar' etc.

Sorry, bit of a digression there, but I agree with your point about all forms of expression. If we cannot find it in ourselves to embrace them, we should at least tolerate them.
In terms of the overall question of the thread, my opinion is that there are no good or bad forms of poetry, only good or bad poets.

Melt water rolling down hills
thawing the ice from the peaks
breathes life into mosses
and issues in snowdrops
that signal the first thaws of spring

The above is a limerick - Simon, please take note; yours was not. In order to be a proper limerick, it doesn't just have to have the correct pattern of stresses, it also has to have a season word and it has to mention an event in nature that is associated with that season and should not have a narrative perspective , amongst other rules.

Besides, Readers Digest/People's Friend-style poetry (as I like to call it) - those awful attempts at humorous verse by people whose idiom really isn't humorous verse, that bounces along in a jolly-cum-peurile trochaic manner and consists of couplets that run: feedline-punchline feedline-punchline endlessly on a loop... you know darned well that you would ban that type of poetry if you had your version of reality - I bloody would!

You know for years I've actually been meaning to read 1984 but never have.....is it actually worth reading?

On the point of limericks I think that there are some very clever ones out there, I'd have never considered them poetry though, but it certainly does fit the bill.

Martin,

Yes. Read it.

and

If the limerick isn't poetry, what is it?

DG,

99.9% of people, if showed my poem (God help 'em) would call it a limerick. So would the Norton Anthology of Poetry, which is the standard tome used in most universities in this country. Language is a consensual, evolutionary activity. I would not call a limerick a frog. But if I did, and I was incredibly persuasive, and everyone started calling it a frog, then eventually it would be a frog. That's the way language works. Logic is not its main drive, and it is never written in stone.

Where did you get that definition? I suspect it refers to the form's origins. But most sources cite the phrase 'will you come to Limerick?' which was shouted by everyone after improvised verses at parties.

Interestingly (and I know how much respect you have for dictionaries) the Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines the limerick as 'a humorous five-line poem with a rhyme scheme AABBA' I might be wrong but I think that makes mine a limerick and yours not. On two counts.

I'm not sure what I thought it was...but I definately believe that limericks should rhyme. they certainly wouldn't have the same type of effect they have if they didn't

I was taking the piss, Simon. You, of all people should know that the rules I quoted are those of the ancient Japanese form called the shitepoo (5,7,5 syllable wank), which is nowhere near as good a form as the limerick so they stick a load of additional rules to make it sound like it is carefully crafted arsedrivel as opposed to the unskilled variety - in reality it just means they all sound like the same sorry excuse for a poem. Limericks are far better generally anyway but, as demonstrated in my haikimerick below, they even sound good when you apply the rules of the shitepoo to them (which is one better than the haiku ever achieves).

As to limericks having to rhyme, I would draw your attention to the following (quite a famous example, not by me):

There once was a man from Dundee,
who got stung on the arse by a wasp.
When asked "Did it hurt?"
he said, "no - it's fine.
It can do it again if it likes."

I too thought a limerick was in the form of AABBA, as distinct from the Swedish form of mediocre performance poetry known as 'a ABBA' which is always set to muzak, sorry - music; and performed wearing ludicrous costumes. This reaches depths of emotional sincerity that, quite frankly, leaves me speechless.
Cx

I'd ban the couplet.

Except for married couples, that is.

Can't have all this immoral coupling going on...


Lady Iphigenia Pommpous-Arsey-Versica

What makes coupling immoral? .... and do the various rail companies know about this?
Cx

I would have thought time has already taken care of the couplet...it's like an appendix, at one point in time it served a useful function...but not anymore!

Sorry DG, took you a bit literally there. Hard day and a combative compulsion.

The original limerick form repeated the first end word as the last, rather than rhyming. Edward Lear did this, though his were mostly crap. So's this one but I thought I'd have a go at the original form.

Gendered Poetics

The long and the short of it is
You’re a Mr, Miss, Mrs or Ms
Although some seek the knife
To remodel their life
And can then choose whatever they is

Didn't the original form re-produce the first line in slightly altered form?
e.g.
The long and the short of it is
You’re a Mr, Miss, Mrs or Ms
Although some seek the knife
To remodel their life
That's what the long & the short of it is

Not sure it works with this example - perhaps more along the lines of
There was an old man from Ealing
....
That silly old man from Ealing

The long and the short of it is
You’re a Mr, Miss, Mrs or Ms
Although some seek the knife
To remodel their life
And have to relearn how they wizz

Poems wot I can't understand.

- Sultan Thikas Tuplanx Abrik of Wirralistan.

Free verse - I don't see why people shouldn't have to pay for it!

Lord Randolph Ponsomby-Ponsomby-Ponsomby-Ponsomby-Ponsomby, KFC & Bar

Whether delivered with racism, islamophobia or prehistoric class hatred the overwhelming desire to insult and assert intellectual superiority just cannot be supressed by a post avant devoid of any ability even to pronounce his own name.

Stone Walling

It's funny how easy it is to get up the backs of those bastions of Official Verse Culture who think there's something wrong with a little difficulty in poetry. Who like their verse - like their reactionary politics - spoon fed to them.

I have to agree (to some extents) with steve if he was making a serious point. Some poets do litter their work with complex metaphor to the point that it's like cracking a safe just to understand the meaning. That said, well used metaphor is a great way to create and show the meaning/purpose of poetry. However, like everything using it without moderation can get a little tiresome for the reader/listener.

I wouldn't ban those types of poems though...just wish they'd be developed further.

Thank you people, for your kind attempts to improve on my limerick. Much appreciated.

cjd, you are absolutely right, Lear's limericks did repeat the last line in a slightly altered form. But I was thinking of the great early twentieth century anonymous example about the old man from Nantucket.

Personally, I prefer the modern variant with the AABBA rhyme scheme. Thus,

A refuse collector from Ely
Trapped the end of himself in a wheelie
Now he can’t help but wince
While adjusting the splints
That allow him to urinate freely

(I wrote the above a few years ago, Paul. But the last line echoes the theme of your new last line to my newer limerick. Spooky.)

Here is another one with a similarly genital motif:


To the casualty ward at St Michael’s
Limped a man with uneven testichaels
While one ball is fine
The other inclines
And chafes on the seat when he cycles

I suspect, cjd, that these examples are exactly the kind of peurile, bawdy limericks which you don't like. Eight year old rhymes and adolescent humour, all executed by a full grown adult who should really know better.....

Well done Siren! Very clever. ;-)
Cx

I read a recent interview with John Ashbery that said that he fell in love with poetry because he "couldn't understand it." I've always instinctively agreed with that. I don't see the point of reading something I already know, over and over again. I'd rather read something that has some resistance in it, that challenges me to make sense of it.

Most mainstream poetry doesn't do that; which is why, in the end, I turned to the linguistically innovative. Even if I don't understand it (and a lot of it I don't), I'd rather read somebody stretching him/herself and the language s/he's using than read another dull slice of larkinesque chopped-up prose.

I think I understand what you are trying to say Steve, but when you look at the audience out there how many are truely going to understand all types of poetry? I tend to feel that those who write poetry with 'resistance' do so for a literary minded audience rather than Jane/Jack Normal on the street. Of course pandering to that kind of lowest common denominator is a dangerous thing to do because you can get to the point where you underestimate an audience.

I like metaphor and complex stuff, but feel that in some occasions it goes too far.

You mean it goes too far for you. Fair enough.

As for the audience, no I'm probably not writing for "Jack & Jill Normal", mainly because I'm not even sure they exist. Everyone is an exception, in my book; "normality" is just a way of enforcing some kind of straightjacket of conformity on people.

I'm not sure why we seem to have this attitude that everybody should enjoy every type of poetry, anyway. In music, we don't expect a Brittany Spears fan to suddenly get a taste for ear-bleeding German techno, or a fan of free form jazz to become a fan of lounge music. Why do we expect everybody to like us?

A lot of modern novelists seem to be able to deal with pretty complex ideas, and people read popular science books by the bucketload; but somehow poetry wants to be unchallenging and nice to everybody. I don't buy it.

Maybe if I were writing for children I'd not be so "difficult" but even there I'd want to challenge conventions. It's also this strange idea that came in after the second world war that poetic language has to be "everyday" that I want to challenge. Keats and Dylan Thomas would turn in their graves at the thought.

I am reading Jeff Wainwright's 'Clarity or Death' at the moment, which I know you are at least in part familiar with, Steve, because I saw you at his reading. The language isn't particularly challenging (it's positively conversational in some places) but its themes and imagery are. Reading a poet like Jeff trying to work through his thoughts on cosmology and life is fascinating. You really are getting a window on one aspect of the writer's mind. Although his style is modern, the themes hark back to Enlightenment metaphysics (not surprising; he taught me Enlightenment Writing at Uni) or Romantic nature poetry. This is the kind of universality which attracts me, it's as though Dawkins wrote poetry - confronting the secular sublime.

I fully understand that this kind of stuff isn't for everyone. But it's a big world and there is always room for a bit of complexity and depth. Ashbery's comment is interesting. It's often the opacity of a work that attracts me. I want to wipe the condensation off the window and look inside.

I quite liked the reading, and the poems, though I didn't buy the book. But I can imagine others thinking all this is too difficult...

I wonder what it is that makes people think there only has to be one kind of poetry? There isn't one kind of music, or novel, or art.

Ignorance

***Quote - Steven Wailing***
"I'm not sure why we seem to have this attitude that everybody should enjoy every type of poetry, anyway. In music, we don't expect a Brittany Spears fan to suddenly get a taste for ear-bleeding German techno, or a fan of free form jazz to become a fan of lounge music. Why do we expect everybody to like us?"
*********************************

Sorry, steven I have problems with this. I can point out a good number of people who like, listen to, read many genres of many different arts. Whilst YOU might not expect someone who is a fan of Britany Spears, as well as 'ear-bleeding' German techno, doesn't mean that it's impossible.

Far from it, in fact I'm sure even you could pick out 6 different genres that you like in the literary world, the music world and even the art world. There are those whose tastes span many (often wildly) different genres/tastes.

That said, you do have a minor point, but the fact that you wonder why people think there is only one type of poetry should be a clue. That is the main body of people 'Jack and Jill Normal' (not that, as you correctly pointed out, there is such a thing as normal) and how they envision poetry because of their experience. I tend to feel that the more 'traditional/old hat/basic' forms of poetry are expected by this kind of audience and newer and more 'modern' forms of poetry tend to scare those who don't write because it is not what they have been told poetry is.

That in itself I think says something too. A lot of 'modern' poetry is very different from what the world at large will have been told at school is poetry. I can't agree with Siren stating that the thought of there being only one type of poetry being ignorance. (I apologise for the previosu awfully structured sentance) Simply because if it is ignorance then we as writers have a burden to bear in that case. We have failed to show the 'world at large' the 'merits/beauty/meaning' of 'modern/varied' forms of poetry. So are the 'modern' poets in the right? Or are 'world at large' in the right? Should we be teaching them the merits of 'modern' poetry? Or should we be writing more 'traditional/old hat/basic' poetry?

Personally, I think some of the more 'pretentious/supposedly avant guarde' forms of poetry are the cause of this. It is seen as bad or 'not really poetry'. Now if I'm right then it could be said that these genres/forms of poetry are redundant and should be done away with. However, I sometimes feel that whilst the aforementioned forms can scare 'the world at large' they have a use in making more traditional/old hat/basic forms look better to the aforementioned audience.

(Sorry for the over use of inverted commas, and awful grammar & structure of this post)

I’m not familiar with ‘Old Hat’ type poetry but I suspect that this is a phrase that in the future will be deemed ‘Old Hat’ too - given time and, of course, the inevitable evolution of language.
I’ve been fuelling my voyeuristic tendencies by reading the godwottery on these threads. What started as a decent discussion has now (like most threads on here that begin to stagnate) has now evolved into the inevitable ’My Dad’s bigger than your Dad’ mentality.

Poetry is exactly what I want it to be. This statement may have a residual undertone of Oscar Wilde, or Humpty Dumpty (I often confuse the two) but I believe that poetry is just that. What I want it to be. The concept of poetry is defined in its loosest sense and various rules have fettered or restricted what qualifies as poetry to some.

DG has his ideas. ‘Siren’ too, whoever he or she is. Steven Waling speaks with a learned voice but then so too does Malpoet and those two , it would appear, have agreed to disagree. Either that or Malpoet is wearing concrete boots at the bottom of the Mersey. Martin Wotsisname sounds like he’s floating down the ‘Poetry Module’ of an English Literature degree, but for me his opinions are full of far too many statements that could begin to alienate some previous contributors to this site. I’m far too old to think that I know everything. I’m ignorant to many things but certainly not to how people can potentially react in certain circumstances.

If I want to write challenging constituents that I believe qualify as poetry then I will. If I want to write simple rhyming couplets - I will. I’ll also do my best to consider the phonology of a word - or lexeme - to give them their sexy-lexy term, and I’ll endeavour to use words that are smooth when utterered or read, unless of course I choose to attach barbs to them or scatter my words with a syntactic porridge gun. My poetry is my poetry. Poets who are soiled with other people’s opinion spend too much time trying to bend or sculpt their poetic balloons into the shape of an ass - or my favourite - a giraffe.
I’ve read varying styles and types of poetry. I instinctively know when I’m enjoying a poem because I become curious. I want to know everything about that poem. I want to take it to pieces and leave it scattered all over my cerebral thoughts.
It all began with Humpty Dumpty.
I mean, what were his motives? Was he still sitting on a wall when he had a great fall. How ’great’ is ’great’. Why ’a’ wall and not ’the’ wall’? Ignoring the notion of indefinite and definite articles. I like my poetry written on more than one level. I don’t care if it lifts me at regular intervals with its rhythm and meter. I quite enjoy that sensation. Not as much though as first thinking ‘what is this person attempting to show me?'
I don’t particularly enjoy poems inflated with the high-pressure air of cliché. This tends to explode a man’s patience. I know the moon is made of cheese and that souls are constantly wallowing in their own slippers.

However, I respect everybody who writes poetry. Who reads poetry - and even those foolish enough to perform their poetry.
What do I do when I hear awful poetry? I dunno.
Probably shout, ‘Sit down Martin’.

Incidentally, The Tudor House Hotel in Wigan is host to the poetic philistines who celebrate and write poetry, in all its guises, tomorrow night at around 8.30pm. It would be great if Martin, Siren, Steven and Malpoet could attend? ‘Interesting’ just doesn’t seem an appropriate word. Come on lads fill your boots…

Ooh, by the way. I wouldn’t ban any type of poetry.
You have to experience the pain to appreciate the pleasure.

I couldn't put it half so eloquently - not least because I'm a rotten typist and I would be here way past my bedtime - but I agree with everything Darren Thomas just said .... with knobs on!
Cx

Perhaps 'with knobs on' was going a little far ...
Cx

The admission of ignorance is the first step to wisdom.

...and speaking of couplets....


The Blank Page:
A Celebration of Ignorance

These several words here celebrate
That joyous, youthful, virgin state
Which in its pure magnificence
Is known to all as Ignorance.
Associated long with bliss,
Unsullied by old Wisdom’s kiss,
Its ecstasy is not disgraced
For being savoured by the chaste.

For who has not, when made to look
At some long word in some old book,
Found revelation unrestrained
In dictionaries’ pages stained
By eager thumbprints over time
In search of words strange and sublime?
For innocence in whole truth is
A chance to solve life’s mysteries.

Which elder would not want, in truth,
To walk again the paths of youth
Untrammelled by Time’s worn-out shoe;
All sights and sounds enjoyed anew?
To fly again that fledgling flight,
To feel the love of love’s first night;
These raptures they can only be
Endowed upon naivety.

Yet some would censure those who yearn
To ration what they’re asked to learn
And sneer at children as they play
At stations which wisdom delay.
But censure like rough winds doth blow
O’er seedlings as they try to grow.
Do these hard minds not grasp the sense
That beauty lies in Ignorance?

For every book that is not read
Is joy deferred, enjoyed instead
Through adaptation or hearsay;
Who says yours is the better way?
And this new age has ways to reach
Its children’s hearts and thence to teach
The lessons that were taught to us
With slide rule, slaps and abacus.

Inclusion and acceptance now
Rule all our roosts and this is how
We’ve reached a time we can insist
That wrong answers do not exist.
England should hold its head unbowed
And hail our scholars long and loud;
Let other nations understand
That Ignorance reigns in this land!

Glub

Malpoet - same sentiment - don't know if I could've been as eloquent. :-o
Cx

I'm not entirely sure what 'Glub' means, but I'm sure it isn't complimentary. Or is it a Swedish kitchen utensil range? I'm sure I've seen it in IKEA.

The poem below was written in a very frustrated mood when I first started my English degree and found myself sitting next to students who didn't know that the black people in the West Indies were not indigenous; or that using 'the circle of life' from the Lion King was not an appropriate way to discuss the theories of literature; or that you can't really do an English degree without having read at least one book from cover to cover.

The poem is a piece of fluff. A weak parody of Swiftian satirical verse, with a deliberately curmudgeonly poetic voice. But my point is ambiguous. I do believe that the dumbing down of this country is intellectually harmful, but I also believe that ignorance is an opportunity to learn. And I also believe that the internet is merely a tool, which can lure people into empty cyber-worlds, or be used to great creative and educational advantage.

Darren, I'm sorry but I'm not doing, nor would I ever be interested in an English degrees, simply because degrees have no currency any more. As for my 'old hat' and other similar comments, I used inverted commas around these because the descriptions are too generalised but couldn't think of a more eloquent way of saying what needed to be said. With regard the way I make 'statements' within my opinions, well that is something I try not to do, by using qualifers like 'I think'. Nothing I say is absolute, and I'm truely sorry if that's the way you've taken it. I'd love to you to tell me to 'shut up' next time you see me read. Unfortunately, I have prior commitments tonight, but maybe next time hey?


Siren, maybe I'm odd and maybe your poem was a bit of fluff, but it reads nicely. Maybe that's just me though hey? You make a good point about the dumbing down of our nation. I find it hard to see my way clear of: 'but I also believe that ignorance is an opportunity to learn'. It's this last quote that makes me wonder, whilst some may have the view what about those ignorant who don't WANT to learn?

You are right, Martin. Ignorance is not the problem, it is the attitude to it which is the issue. But that said, if people do not want to learn, that is up to them. I suppose my problem is (was, I've mellowed a bit since that poem was written) with those who are too ignorant to recognise their own ignorance, if you know what I mean. And it should be remembered that ignorance is merely a particular quality, not an overall description of a person's whole life. I am ignorant of anything to do with X-boxes, musical theatre, or reality TV. And the more I learn about the things I am interested in, the more my relative ignorance stretches out before me. Knowledge creates more questions. Knowledge actually increases subjective ignorance, in relative terms. All we can do is keep on keepin' on, in the words of the great seventies philosopher. Or, in the words of an earlier philosopher (Wittgenstein) 'Clarity or Death!'

Oh, and if you think university degrees have no currency any more, try getting a job as a teacher without one. And I don't mean a 'lifestyle tutor' or any of the myriad nebulous professions where people masquerade as learned.

Oh, also, as well, and too, I cannot, sadly, make it tonight. I'm going to an Elaine Feinstein reading at the John Rylands Library in Manchester. I'm sure Darren's night will be great but I know for a fact that tonight I will be listening to fine poetry in beautiful surroundings, then I'm going to get pissed.

Okay, I accpet your point when it comes to certain professions, such as law, medicine and teaching. However, it's not as if these days a degree is even respected. I actually made the choice not to go to university because it's high (financial) risk, with low potential yeild. Instead I opted for the much cheaper and equal quality OU, and I know a good number of people who have chosen the same course of action. Maybe I've been biased against Uni's by the low admission standards and whatnot but when I wanted to be a solicitor there was an alternate route to becoming qualified which I took (still didn't help me get a fellowship though). Again maybe I'm biased against Uni's (especially Jogn Moore's, where it seems any brain dead person can walk onto a course).

Given your statement 'Knowledge creates more questions. Knowledge actually increases subjective ignorance, in relative terms', I wonder if you believe it is possible for someone to become a polymath these days? Or do you believe those who try are just Jack of all trades master of none?

Degrees are still respected but the grades are now more important, given that university attendance has increased. There is also the question of where the degree was obtained, and which course was taken. Thirty years ago, a two-two was still a viable qualification for a graduate, nowadays things are a little tighter. A first is still a first.
I entered uni with no formal qualifications (I was one of those 'brain dead' people you mention). I gained acceptance on the strength of two A4-length literary reviews I wrote, rather than a year long access course or a two year A-level stint. I am now in my third year and doing okay, thank you. If universities accept a lower standard of applicant (and they do this for financial reasons) one of two things will happen. Either the standard of the applicant will rise as they benefit from higher education (I have seen this happen with countless students), or they will simply get a third or a two-two. There may be some devaluation of the university degree but there is a standardisation procedure which keeps British unis at generally the same level (external markers assess random samples of marked work). What happens now is that employers are more interested in the not just the grade but the actual score a student achieves. Hence, 'high two-ones' or even 'high firsts' (75%+). If the goalposts have shifted somewhat it just makes it more important that students score hat-tricks.

Polymaths still exist but specialization is more prevalent these days. Exponentially increased technology has forced knowledge to become increasingly fragmented. These things are driven partly by the changing labour market and partly by the overall increase in basic education. But secondary education has become a little like driving instruction. You don't learn how to drive, you just learn how to pass the test. Performance-led educational policies do not necessarily promote the wider search for knowledge.

Anyway, I think we've gone off message. What was this thread about again?

more 'modern' forms of poetry tend to scare those who don't write because it is not what they have been told poetry is.


Maybe Jack & Jill Normal should grow up and stop believing everything they're told.

Or what they have read somewhere (like, for example, in the post below this one).

I have noticed a lot on this thread about being attracted to poetry because you don't understand it, and yes... sometimes that is true, but it only happens for me with poems in which I actually enjoy the bits that I do understand and therefore want to figure out the rest. I have read a lot of quite celebrated up to the minute (I'm not going to say modern, because that word refers to a style that uses accentual verse, urban/industrial themes, logical positivist philosophy and semiotic principles, and unreliable narrators) poetry that has been very nebulous, and I'm intelligent enough to get it in such cases where there is something there to get. Fairly regularly, you notice that there isn't anything there at all and that the poet just isn't much cop - I'm intelligent enough to notice that too. After that, there is a very small grey area where you get stuff like the lyrics of Michael Stipe (for example) where he phrases some of his songs to seem extremely deep without actually having any real meaning whatsoever, and that's good too. To be honest, there are a lot of charlatans out there, in art as well as in poetry, and plenty of people are stupid enough to fall for stuff on the basis that they don't understand it.

Following on from DG's post, I must say, sometimes, I find that I will listen awfully hard for a meaning in some poems and often as DG pointed out there isn't a meaning. This gets me thinking, if a poem doesn't have a meaning is there a point in writing it in the first place? It may be a case of apples and oranges but if there's no point or meaning within an article it won't get written, or if it does certainly not published. So if I could would I ban this type of poem? I'm still not sure.


As an extra to the question I asked in the OP, if you HAD to ban a type of poetry what would you ban?

I'd ban any poems that didn't have the express approval of the prophet, peace be upon him.

I'd ban any poem that exhibited excessive mentions of primates (the animals, not the clergymen) in a highly rhythmic context.

That would be complicated - you would have to have a figure, over which a number of mentions of primates was deemed to be excessive

Two would be ok. The mention of the third would need to be allusive.

Manimal

Prime, primates, proud and preening people,
Differ little from their kin.
Nice vocal chords, opposing thumbs,
And much less hairy skin.

Deep, deep inside though, little shows,
That chimp is far from chap.
Their genes show common ancestry
With little species gap.

In the beginning was the word,
Of that there's little doubt.
The human creature left the chimp,
When first he spoke right out.

But was that language handed down,
In supernatural gift?
Or did voice form from mutant gene,
To bring the specie rift?

Just look upon the monkey group,
And see how they behave.
Fighting, fondling, fucking free.
The weakest, they enslave.

Apart from upright gait and song,
These beasts are us, with hair.
Should we class them now as brutes,
And deny them human care?

As slavers, we owned soulless blacks,
And herded them in ships.
Those people then weren't 'touched by god',
But beasts we thrashed with whips.

Now! Tell me! Is a bonobo
No different from a cow?
Or should we count gorillas in.
The human family now?

Black and white, hirsute or smooth,
We're creatures much the same.
No god distinguished ape from us,
We share much, but our name.

Good points, well made, Malpoet. Language is what differentiates us from the rest of the animal kingdom (patriarchal phrase which is going out of fashion), in that it it enables and encourages rational thought. But people vastly overestimate the differences between humans and animals. Much of our behaviour is animalistic, even (perhaps especially) when we are not aware of this. A poetry event is a social gathering of chattering primates. We assume intellectual superiority but it is all just a question of scale.
Ants build cities. Chimps and otters (and some birds) use basic technology. Elephants have social histories. Magpies grieve the death of a mate. Dogs have friends. Cats are sensual hedonists.
But grey squirrels are not consciously imperialistic. That's a fallacy.

I asked our most imperial squirrel if he was conscious. He bit me.

Consciousness

I am, I am, I know I am.
I have been since so young.
I am who I know I am.
That I know,
shows what I am.

An oak is unaware,
I think,
of oakenness or tree.
Bacterium of
bacteriousness,
is absolutely free.

But, where lives
the knowingness,
that I am surely me?
That I am not
a rock, or coconut,
a squirrel greyest grey.

Is the me,
that know's I'm me
in brain, or mind,
or where?
If mind it is,
then do I mind.
If brain,
then do I care?

The me that drinks
until I reel,
in alcoholic haze,
does not behave
like sober me,
but me is there
each way.

If me survives
continuous
through liquor
poisoned cells.
Then surely me
must live beyond
the body
where I dwell.

The thread of me
that lives on through,
the child
and the man.
In sickness, health
and drunkenness,
in waking, sleep
or spell,
may not survive
a damaged brain,
though body mine
lives on.

A comatose,
or cabbage me,
would not be me at all.

If mind, or soul,
or spirit me,
of DNA were free,
that pulp brained
sorely damaged man,
would surely still
be me.

The truth it seems
is simple.
I die a bit
each day.
Enough remains
to recollect
that all will die
some day.

They may not be conscious or imperial but they are good eating apparently!

Yes but beware. May contain nuts.

So does this thread but that doesn't stop you.

Hey! I'm not a nut, slightly odd maybe but not a nut. The fact that I get more sense when I talk to myself or go off on tangents that only I can follow, doesn't make me crazy. Nor does the fact I occasionally jump up and down for no reason or collect sprite bottle tops and have a stolen bowling pin on my window sil.

Or does it?
No, I'm just being silly.
Yes, of course I'm just being silly.
That's right, I'm perfectly sane and completely nut free!
Which is great news for athsmatics!

Oh, sorry about that where was I? Oh yes, what I would ban if I had to.

I've decided that if I HAD to ban a form of poetry, I'd ban adolescent and sappy love poems.

(PS: If there are any men in white coats out there coming to take me away, I promise that the above was just for (poor) comic effect)

I concur...However adolescent and sappy love poems are the begining..... the heart and and mind finding voice.... until one day many a year later after life's bitter kisses they can be poets like what we are!.