of an evening i read i read fantasy sci-fi adventure mystery crime roma along with all that falls within around and between such boundaries i even read nonfiction upon occasion i very rarely i basically never sit down with a book of poems as i went forth to meet the book of poetry pangaea poems had sent me as part of their poetry slam i realized i hadn't really read poems since school at school poetry was treated something like a cryptic crossword poetry was a statement the author had contrarily wrapped up in riddles and it was simply the reader's job if they were clever enough to decipher it like i said generally when i delve between the pages of my latest book of choice it's of an evening it's before bed i'm curled up in a pile of blankets somewhat reminiscent of a small woolly volcano and i'm looking to relax to read myself off into fond dream worlds to fall asleep with my nose crushed into page 148 and elegantly drooling up on the next page poetry seems like the last choice for such an interaction purely because poetry seems so much more active than the passive perambulations of prose reading prose you simply submit to you are dictated to by some far-off author poetry feels more like a doctor dot a fill in the gaps it requires you not simply to read but to construct you can tell by the fact that my novels are pristine yet i'm one of those people who visibly winces when you dog hear a page and yet a poetry book of mine hasn't been read until it's been annotated heavily i don't go to a poetry book unless it's with a pencil in hand it was really hard when i was considering reviewing this book anything i talked about wouldn't simply be what the author had said but what i made of it poetry seems to contain a necessary deficit you approach it and rather than there being a statue already made there is a mold and you pour yourself into it any judgment i give any attempt i make to translate this high-level language into simple logical communicative words will be to give some personal private insight into my very psyche i'd read and i'd think this poem is clearly all about sex because i inevitably think all poems are about sex but what if it's not what if nobody else sees that what if everyone else reads it in some beautifully innocent way and just shoots me sideways glances they'll ask what's wrong with my mind that i clearly took a poem that's about flowers or federal government or the inevitable heat death of the universe and chopped it full of phallic images luckily i now have the lion's share of a degree i can defend my depravity by announcing the author dead and meanings infinitely inherent in the social context of language my favorite definition of poetry is that found amongst the critics known as the russian formalists and their idea of litteriness that is that poetry is language defamiliarized language made strange language other than our everyday shop soil discourse poetry is trying to be different it's trying to do shop and how is aesthetic and represent those feelings and emotions that transcend what is talked about from the day to day if you use this language colloquially it must deaden poetry needs to do different things to do complex things poetry doesn't have to have a right answer it's full of that necessary indeterminacy where double meanings or multiple meanings or no specific meanings are what's there take the wasteland for instance whose author t.s eliot counted critics who were claiming it as a perfect portrayal of a grim world war battle scene he claimed he meant the poem to have no meaning at all this does not mean that the poem ultimately has no meaning i need a roland bart sign i can hold up whenever i want to argue the author's opinion doesn't take precedence but it does give a good example of multiple meanings being important being vital in the language used to construct something whatever the intention behind that creation was personally although i loved reading the wasteland i hate writing about it the reason i find it so difficult is i feel the wasteland was communicating something but it was doing it in feelings in what it made you sense it described odd unconnected creations and paired weird words and stimulated emotions in the reader are fresh rather than simply describing what or how elliot would have liked you to feel reading wasn't in the content but in the reader's response to it something like a painter using colour but no distinct outline so i guess one thing i'm trying to say is that poetry doesn't always have to mean something it can just be your innate responses to the images or even the bass sounds but also the what meanings you do get from a piece they're as worthy as any others even if they differ from the author's intentions the brilliance of poetry is in the cacophony of layered interpretations in the twisting language which attempts to represent what eludes easy explanation it can definitely be hard to read but there are great rewards for wrangling with it so what do you guys think do you read poetry and do you have a favorite poet have you suffered from some of the same difficulties i have and what do you think of my responses to them do let me know in an upcoming video i will actually be reviewing this book and maybe we can read a poem or two together create some sort of stitched patchwork response to it other than that i will see you in my next video guys bye i interrupt the outro time to give you some quick news although i've not been on sable court a lot recently i have been on youtube the fifth episode of ten green bottles is finally out and i made a stand-in video for the four-spice channel talking about what books i needed to read before i died so lots of things there for you to watch you