ITS GOT TO BE
SOMETHING THAT
Sez “were cute"
YET ALLUDES TO
Ou BAOASS SiSEe.

YOURE RGHT

MiKE / BOY
BANDS Ree
THE DARUNGS
oF COP
CULTURE I!

™T-
ALMOST
execoswe!

PRICTICALY
The me

WANT SOME NOOKEsS
O GET To THE KITCHEN ,

BY DE VERE

YOu Oon

NEEO TRENT | WHAT WE
To 8€ IR A

BAND TOOAY!

WEY Awe

AMIMORE BAND
HIAMES.

TMT-WE

MIGHT GET
HOT BUT
Tt'S PRETTY
UNLIKELY...

FUN WITH KATHLEEN

CONTINUED ON PAGE 14

__._ October 22, 2001

Alphabet Soup
(Writing Poetry in the 21st Century)

By: Simon Goring

The world of poetry is a
quickly and rapidly changing
world. Poetry has come a
long way since it was invent-
ed in the early 1970s. Since
its inception poetry has
evolved from words on a
page to words on a page that
actually take the shape of an
object, a major paradigm
shift for any modern art form.
Many of the more famous
modern poets have taken to
this style of “concrete” poetry
including Longfellow, Samuel
Beckett and Homer; indeed
the original text of the epic-
concrete poem “The
Odyssey” takes the shape of
the Adriatic Sea. The advan-
tage of concrete poetry is
that it lets the reader form
mental images without hav-
ing to read the actual poem,
of course the words add sig-
nificantly to the image.
Recently | read an excellent
poem called “My dog is pret-
ty” by Timmy Westmoreland
(b. 1994) which was written
with such vivid imagery that |
almost didn’t need the con-
crete image of the dog to
actually picture the dog; how-
ever the multifarious purpos-
es of concrete poetry should
not limit us to just the one
style.

Ever since ee Cummings
first experimented with
acrostic poetry (in which the
first letter of each line spells
a word) in his well-known
famous poem “robot mud-
wrestling” many other poets
and versifiers have been
experimenting with the
acrostic style. Some of the
more avant-guard poets
have even been combining
and mixing other poetic
styles with the acrostic form
to produce new, novel and
unique poetry, such as Ezra
Pound’s Acrostic/Haiku
poem “Wow”:

Wowsers is that neat!
Oh my gosh, look at
that thing

Wonderful neat thing.

The obvious care and
concern with which the poem
was written is contrasted by
the apparent frivolity of its
subject. Those who have
never heard of poetry before
(I think of myself only one

month ago) may think that
this kind of superficial, shal-
low pap is simply a waste of
time (which it is to the ama-
teur neophyte); however
once you are initiated into
the world of poetry the deep-
er meaning of Ezra Pound's
words become both clear
and obvious.

Initiation into the world of
poetry is a simple matter.
For one week | had to walk
around Prince George smok-
ing Galois (in the red pack-
age!) wearing a black turtle-
neck with a beret and carry-
ing a bottle of Beaujolais with
an orange candle stuck in the
top. If confronted by Actual
Poets | was forced to recite
free-verse poetry to the
64/32 beat of a bongo drum.
If my poetry didn’t rhyme |
had to dance interpretively to
the myth of Gilgamesh, king
of Uruk. A difficult task if
ever there was one.

This brings me to my last
point, rhyming. Many poets
attempt poetry that has no
rhyming pattern, but it fast
becomes quickly apparent
that these so-called poets
are simply rank amateurs.
Ezra Pound in “Wow” (above)
rhymed the last two lines ina
simple “abb” form, so why
are these so-called alleged
poets allowed to break from
the chains that bind poetry to
its rock of creativity?

Compare the following
two couplets by William
Blake: “My mind is like this
Wonder bread/Filled with
preservatives” and “I like
happy people/Quasimodo in
a steeple.” Certainly the sec-
ond rhyming couplet is more
elegiac and poetic than the
first. The meaning is
obscurely concealed by the
sudden  abruptness _ of
“Quasimodo in a steeple” but
on closer examination we
find that Blake is trying to tell
us that “I [Blake] like happy
people”. The meaning of the
first couplet is unclear and
not even worth analysis
because it lacks any rhyming
pattern. It is worth noting
that Blake wrote the first cou-
plet while poetry was still in
its infancy,

(Continued on page 15)

(continued from page