Makes Nothing Happen

I started this blog so I could compel myself to write about poetry. I've been detecting in myself an "instant gratification" impulse both in my writing and reading, and this needs to be remedied before my critical faculties are numbed entirely. Writing should be about thinking things through in words. I am skilled at formulating maxims, less skilled at living up to them. Then again, we do not judge ourselves fairly.

Judgment and appreciation, their interweavings, shall be the subject of this blog within a blog. I shall try to be catholic in my choice of poems, but sadly, I assure you, Japanese poetry of the 19th century is going to get short shrift. Perhaps, also: Ukrainian poetry of the 12th. And silent poetry - a burgeoning genre - where the poems themselves are blank, only the titles matter. I like these poems myself, but am willing to make concessions for my putative readers, who might be less easily amused...

Whimsy is, as it has always been, a dictating principle. Why? That is the phoenix question. Jack-in-the-box-of-all-boxes-that-are-not-boxed-in-themselves. We spin, but the ground exists. I have fallen again.

Auden said "Poetry makes nothing happen"; yes, that's what it does, it makes . The point of reading is to unmake - a fine complement, necessary. We began with nothing, and we must end with nothing, and what happens meanwhile? We ask why.