Poems are Rubbish (on the whole)!

Simply reading a poem and trying to understand it is ‘analysing’, don’t you think? We can never really know what another person is thinking or trying to say because we can’t actually get ‘into’ their head and feel what they are feeling-we can only guess with our ‘theory of mind’. So a would-be poet has to interpret what they are feeling into language which can be a difficult task to say the least, then perhaps commit it to paper and the reader has to assimilate the poem and interpret it all over again, often in the context of their own life, experiences and language skills. The meaning is likely to be so distorted that I wonder why we bother writing poetry at all because no one will ever really understand what you’re trying to say.

I think most of us probably agree that much ‘academic analyses’ just seems so beyond what is sensical just like art critics comments (anyone watching the BBC2/4 Beauty season on visual arts? The things they say about art seem ridiculous) and I sometimes think these people deliberately do this to exclude the ‘ordinary person’ like myself, from entering into their realm and to give themselves an air of credibility when what they’re doing is just very simple. Anish Kapoor was a prime example of this last night on ‘Beauty’. Then, most of us ‘simple folk’ are too scared to say, “hang on a second, that’s just a polished concave bronze mirror-what it does and how it looks is rather appealing but its nothing to do with ‘humanity’s struggle with the inner tragedy caused by his metaphorical expulsion from Eden which was a result of his curiosity and desire for knowledge, however forbidden'” Its just a beautiful object that says whatever the viewer wants it to say and so you as a would-be messenger will always fail in your task of trying to convey anything. Don’t give us your unintelligible comments on it.

I’m going to make a (pretentious) confession now: I am a huge fan of haiku and waka.

I’d like to see a life times philosophy in one verse, that can be understood, without ambiguity and differing interpretations by different people! Th reader sees what they want to see not always what the poet wanted them to see and that’s why I wonder what value poems are.

An eminent musicologist I know once told me that lyrics and poems are not the same thing since lyrics tend to be more literal than poems (there were many other differences too, but I can’t remember them!). Lyrics can be poetic but they’re not poems, and I’d posit, especially those of that soaring intellect and master of language, Robbie Williams :wink: Angels indeed…..