Enemy of Entropy

Poetry Question

18 April 2008, 7:08 am. 3 Comments. Filed under Poetry, Reading.

In honor of National Poetry Month, the Acad­emy of Amer­i­can Poets has been send­ing out a poem a day via email to sub­scribers. I’m enjoy­ing them, but one of them just…

Have you ever found the form of a poem to be so weird that it gets into the way of the mean­ing? I’m find­ing that to be the case with “Fer­rum” by M. NourbeSe Philip. I did get the words, but the for­mat was so dis­tract­ing as to make read­ing a chore, rather than a pleasure.

3 Comments »

  1. avatar lceel. 21 April 2008, 2:28 pm

    Pre­ten­tious. Per­haps, good poetry, but done in a pre­ten­tious and inex­cus­ably egre­gious manner.

  2. avatar Hope. 22 April 2008, 12:23 am

    The for­mat­ting strikes me as a case of con­fus­ing obscu­rity with depth. How­ever, I should point out that I’m tired enough to not be able to remem­ber my login for this site, so I may not be being suf­fi­ciently char­i­ta­ble to the poem.

    Weird form should, I think, con­vey some kind of mean­ing. It can work, but it can also just be a barrier.

  3. avatar Moondazed. 25 April 2008, 9:11 pm

    Weird form can be mean­ing­ful if it serves a pur­pose or is rep­re­sen­ta­tive… this poem is just annoy­ing :(

 

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