Art

Poems, I just don't get. Surely I can't be the only one who just will never be able to truly appreciate them, or what is more likely the case, am I the only one to see they're actually not an art form at all? I was going to write one down here to propose what I'm saying, but figured I might put a load of people off by writing up some poetry at the start of this entry!

I've got to tread very carefully here, I know a bunch of my friends write poetry. They are also very good apparently, as one of my friends at least has had quite a few of theirs published. Something bugs me about them though, and it will need a very quick but thorough history. Bear with me, it won't be long.

Poems started off at a basic level I guess. Again, I don't quote this as the truth, but they must have started off like that as nearly everything has to begin at a starting point. Anyway, so you have the general rhyming pattern which is simple: aabb. Meaning the first line ends with a word that rhymes with a word that ends the second line. The same goes for the third and fourth line too. So for example, here's a poem I found off the internet:

The lizard is a timid thing

That cannot dance or fly or sing;

He hunts for bugs beneath the floor

And longs to be a dinosaur.

Funny ain't it? Well, that to me is a great poem, because it makes logical sense to me, and it is spoken quite nicely too. Something to do with the rhythm I think. What do I know though? (I just found out it's called a quatrain. There you go, I learned something!)

Moving on though, you get all sorts of different rhyming patterns. abba, ababcdab, abcdabcdefef, abacus, barbbq... etc you get the idea. While some of them of course make sense like the first one does, they then just go off the wall. But, at least in some distant logical manner, I guess you could still see them, as there is a rhyme there, though they sound nowhere near as nice. Then...

Oh god, I don't even know its name, but then it goes all KER-azy and things that flying out the window, things such as logic and form and RHYTHM! There are pentameters crying in their sleep, and sonnets jumping off cliffs over this stuff! Here is an example, off some random google search:

NOT MY POEM, THIS ISN'T MINE I FOUND IT ON THE INTERNET

Sometimes,
often these days
I feel like I am totally,
utterly
alone.

I am alone in a room
filled with people
chatting
greeting
saying hi

I am alone
unloved
unwanted
by any
save maybe...
[Continues on for miles]

I don't even get that, not at all. If you want to find that poem, here it is. As I was saying though, there's nothing about that poem I liked at all, and this is purely because because I do Maths, which means my brain is formed to do logical stuff and while I do have the capacity to be creative (I actually secretly feel it is one of my strengths, my imagination that is :) ) I can't see anything in these poems. However, I do have a wild theory regarding these things.

SUDOKU's for the logical are like POEM's for the illogical.

What I mean is that whereas the logical population like Sudoku's, because they have a logical answer, poem's exist purely so that budding poet's can 'apply' their own meanings to them. Take the lizard poem up there, and read it through again. Here's an example of a poet analysing it:

"Well, clearly the lizard has a longing to be a dinosaur, because of the superiority of the species. It feels like as it currently exists, the lizard has no recognition and is ashamed of itself. However, to become a dinosaur would bring about some meaning in its life, where people would look to it in fear and.."

See? And that's coming from somebody who knows nothing about analysing. So I think I have proven my point, and come to the conclusion that whereas some poem's are perfectly acceptable as a creative art, others... just aren't. Now, if anybody knows any good limerick, please do pass them on. Yes, I do love a good limerick and I AM aware of the funny rhyming pattern in them...