On Poems and Toros

There is a reason we hate poems. When we pick up a book of poems it naturally disgusts us it is pretentious and goes on forever (even though the lines are short) the words are muddled make no sense after one another and the story is either non-existant or indecipherable. Even if we know we would like to be different would like to like poems we have to steady our initial nausea swallow it unwholesomely until we learn to digest it. These are the many reasons we hate poems and those reasons are offshoots of the one thing.

It is the same reason we hate bullfighting. When we watch a bullfight it naturally disgusts us it is preventable and goes on inexplicably (we're modern civilization for chrissakes!) the passes are torture and cannot be seen one from the other and the tragedy is either non-existant or monstrous. Even if we know we would like to be different and would like to like bullfighting we have to steady our initial repulsion and swallow it unwholesomely until we learn to digest it. There is a reason we hate bullfighting and those reasons are offshoots of the one reason.

Look at the faena of the bullfight and the line of a poem. The line of a poem is its most basic narrative unit, where the poet can convince you beyond mere ornamentation (single words) and yet before you are consumed in the whole of the emotional poetic paragraph. In the faena the matador has his chance to shine with the muleta (red cloth on a stick) and is for the first time left all alone with the bull. Both units are the hinge of the whole. Of course there are differences. But in the faena the great matador will do a series of passes the goal of which is to bring the horns of the bull as close to his body as possible without killing him in order to prepare the bull for death in a deadly way. In the poetic line, the poet must string together words the goal of which is to bring the meaning as close as possible to prose (that is, a chained meaning as opposed to individual words) without becoming prosaic in order to set the poem to a structural blueprint.

Now if the matador is tossed or killed the effect is not spoiled but it becomes immediately prosaic; questions of timing, grace, emotion become subsumed in a scientific journalism that needs to know who what where why and how. The poetic line is similar; it must jostle but not gore the reader or he will lose himself in scientific journalism and the effect will not be spoiled but will become prosaic.

But who wants to live outside of journalism these days? That's why poems are not on the front page. News that stays news doesn't move papers. We will watch a goring before we watch a whole corrida and we will ask our w5 before we will concern ourselves with textual architecture. It's just the times and there's no blaiming that, but our taste for this sort of thing explains why we like neither poems nor bullfighting and will barely (or not) tolerate funding for either.