Ars poetica

Written on 10/29/09 as a revision of a first draft. I will post the first draft (which is inherently different) than this one at the end of this note. I decided to further explore what I was initially touching on in the original draft: ars poetica. Ars poetica translates to "the art of poetry," so the following poem is a poem about writing poetry. The analytic dictionary form seemed perfect for the task, as the resulting poem would be a poem about poetry. I also wanted to expand on my professor's comment that there was “an urgency of language” and a “simultaneous pent-up nature of language” present in the first draft..

Ars poetica

Academic rhetoric would seem purposefully obfuscated with the endless tousling of an indefinite consciousness, always chasing hand-me-down emotions and underdeveloped busywork. A necrotic orthodoxy of neurotic opinions lies across every exploration. Rarely fumbling, yet drowning in untouched drafts. New world double-talk, a middle-of-the-road perception, upends little secrets at every stage. We attempt erratically through outright outpourings to sedate an explosion. Less familiar challenges yield myriad results. We salvage causes from savage exchanges that immortalize our impure science. Improvising inconsistently, every author stagnates near obliteration. Cut-out craft becomes fatal tedium and inept unions underhandedly extinguish our taxing stories, lacking elegance.


First draft, untitled, written on 9/18/09:

The words come out in sudden bursts
Like the flicker of the T.V.
Falling down quickly just headfirst
Sometimes they play a bit off-key
Perhaps that's to be expected from someone like me.

Unheard through thickened mental fogs
Waiting restlessly for their cue
Prisoners of dreary gulags
And be home in time for curfew
Where they may remain obfuscated from peer review