Provoked by the question "Can anyone explain to me the difference between poetry and a game?"
Has anyone washed eggs? They come out
with their shapes like Buddha universes,
with their colours like dreams of colours,
with the perfect eye of their interiors. So --
why washing? Well, think
of where they've been. Or beyond that,
think of chicken shit, the worst
of shits, its cling, its acid stink. It's not
a game. But when you load the last batch
on the top of the clean racks and just one egg
cracks -- that's a moment like bottom
of the ninth, it's a heart-sink swing for the fence
and miss. The slime white
runs over the whole lot, and the yolk,
whole for a moment on the top mesh,
quivers, then falls, pressed
and dripping through the wire.
So poems fail, then disappear.
__________
The questioner was Jim Andrews. (Site requires shockwave.) I don't think this is an adequate answer for him -- someone else take a crack at it.
2 Comments
Can’t get at Andrews’ site without great confusion. Can you explain what he said and what your poem meant?
Jim Andrews and I both belong to an e-mail list for Canadian poets. We had a kerfuffle yesterday about whether cutting-edge/experimental/weird stuff gets the recognition it (arguably) deserves. In the course of all that, Jim asks this question.
This poem is not really an answer for him, I fear. Just a response, just what came out when I tried to answer the question. Like President Bush, it is not to the point. (On the other hand, like President Bush, I’m not sure I understand the question.)
The poem has something to do with the differences and connections between work & games — and creativity, which is both and neither.