I read this last night in Gary Snyder's essay: "The Etiquette of Freedom":
"Practically speaking, a life that is vowed to simplicity, appropriate boldness, good humor, gratitude, unstinting work and play, and lots of walking brings us close to the actually existing world and its wholeness."
Amen.
I'm not sure Gary would like to share the page with my mug. Sorry Gary!
Gary lives some forty miles south of here as the Crow flies. He bought one hundred acres with fellow Beatnick Allen Ginsburg. Gary lived there, and commuted to Davis, California where he kept his day job as a Professor. Otherwise he is known as the Poet of Deep Ecology.
I like his essays better. Poetry escapes me. Seems like a lower form of communication. Rhyme. Rhythm. Cadence. They mean nothing to me.
Give me prose! Paragraphs! Ideas that are written as spoken---shared through sentences. Say what you mean. Communication is tough enough without trying to say such through some Post Graduate, Hyper Educated, Ego Ridden, Metaphoric Meaningless Word Sequence Fog.
3 comments:
Oh but poetry stays with us longer! Plus it allows us to contemplate the words to find our own meaning.
~Annie
Oh, I wish I could enjoy Poetry. It would make me cooler! More hip! Able to tolerate the high falutin folks who go to Art Openings in 100year old former sweatshop Warehouses in the Yuppie parts of towns. But Alas, I don't get it.
Maybe when I grow up? Until then...
"There once was a man fron Nantucket"...
I certainly read a lot more prose than poetry, but I wouldn't say one is better. I think good poetry requires a lot more effort from both the writer and reader. Snyder and Robinson Jeffers were a couple favorite poets.
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