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Friday, August 07, 2009

What Is A Poem?

Charles Bukowski, American Poet

A poem is not something made; it is a making. It is not the finished act, the ergon as the Greeks have it; it is the energia, the energy, the doing of something. An Op-Ed column is read; a poem is something we grapple with, run with, make love to, share years with, are repelled by: it is a dynamic which comes from one being to another and creates an ongoing whirlpool of mind. There are the bricks and mortars of poems; there are ways to make poems; the only true poem is a making, regardless of the meter, the words, the scansion.

A poem that is merely made tumbles from the living to the dead, a vampire. That's why the vampire image is so popular today - the vampire and the zombie: we have fallen from Life into Death in Life. Our Cult of Celebrity is dead and phoney art, a thrill where no real sensuality exists: a death rattle mistaken for an orgasm. Make poetry, not war.

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