"I am a stenographer of my mind. I write down what passes through it, not whats going around me. I am a poet." — Allen Ginsberg
"I do not understand poetry", a mantra so often intoned. I used to think this had to do with the oblique lens through which poets see the world, but I'm beginning to see that this has more to do with time, the gap of years during which a new generation of Poets acquire that particular voice which 'speaks' to their generation.
When this occurs, when a new 'voice' enters the conversation, it causes a rift among the status quo: a rip, a tearing of the old fabric which clings, unrelentingly, to tradition. When a new guard of Poets take hold, they sound an alarm; theirs is a celebration, a battle cry and a warning — a call to arms for those who've been searching for words that both agitate and assuage, waiting for those voices to rise & shake up complacency and re-adjust their own world view - the way Ginsberg and Anne Sexton and Dickinson and Yeats and Neruda did .....
In poetry today, we're seeing a shift from the static & academic to the fluid & intrinsic. It's happening in other art forms such as Dance. (a great piece by Gia Kourlas @ NYT "The Margins of a Form Are, Increasingly, Not Where They Used to Be") For those who say they don't "get" poetry, I say, poetry is all around us. It's not something that needs to be learned. You know it when you hear it.
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| Sibling Rivalry Press |
Today's voices of Poets that are resonating come from Sibling Rivalry Press - its stated mission "is to publish work that disturbs and enraptures." And that, it does. I challenge anyone to come out of the experience of reading Collin Kelley's 'Render', DGilson's 'BritLit', Joanna Hoffman's 'Running for Trap Doors',
Render: Poems by Collin Kelley - book trailer
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