Poetry?

I think this is the right place to talk about this...the lack of poetic poetry in North America? (!)

It wasn't until I discovered the poets contained within Bachelard's 'Poetics of Space' and 'Poetics of Reverie' that I finally 'got' poetry. Prior to reading those books, I felt like poetry was an intellectual exercise...so vague...filled with allusions...stuff your brain really had to work at. (ha!) Maybe it's a cultural thing. Do I simply prefer or relate to the French mentality...or do these guys really FEEL more? (than the British and North American poets I'd read) All of a sudden 'poetry' was crystal clear....good poetry (this could just be what I relate to, good poetry - in my mind) bypasses your head and heads straight for your heart. You FEEL the words. You don't have to think about what the hell it means. It was a revelation to me, when I discovered poetry I actually liked! And it made me think that North Americans and the British (english languaged cultures?) are missing something! Tooo tooo left brain. Social commentary Poetry...why not just make it Prose?

Here are some examples of the poetry that made me, finally, love poetry...


I wait. Everything is repose.
Then innervated future
You are image within me.
Everything is dreamed first.

Gilbert Troilliet


In my horizon-edged cup
I drink from the brim
A simple swallow of sunshine
Pale and icy.

Pierre Chappuis


In the closed up house
he focuses on an object in the evening
and plays that game of existing.

Jean Follain


Invent. There is no lost feast
At the bottom of memory.

Robert Ganzo


Ever upstream from myself
I advance, implore and pursue myself
- O harsh law of my poem
In the hollow of a shadow which flees me.

Where i thought I was remembering
I wanted ony a little salt
To recognize myself and be on my way.

Edmond Vandercammen


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Bachelard was a University Professor whose 'whole career was founded upon his philosophical critique of scientific knowledge and his conception of a free type of rationalism, quite different from the abstract mode of thinking which the word usually designates, and wholly bent upon the art of using reason as an instrument to achieve an always closer approach to concrete reality."

"At that time, the future of Bachelard's career was easy to foretell. Having specialized, as they say, in the philosophy of science, he was likely to write a dozen more books on the same subject. But things were not to be that way. Bachelard fired his first warning shot when he unexpectedly published a book curiously entitled "The Psychoanalysis of Fire." I distinctly remember my first reaction to it. It was: What are they going to say? Who, THEY? Well, we, all of us, the colleagues. After appointing a man to teach philosophy of Science and seeing him successfully do sof for a number of years, we don't like to learn that he has suddenly turned his interest to a psychoanalysis of the most unorthodox sort, since what then was being psychoanalyzed was not even people, but an element."

To put it simplistically Bachelard had mastered his Left brain and he decided to explore, as fully, his Right brain. Balance!

And here are a couple of comments from Bachelard...

"For consciousness rejuvenates everything, giving a quality of beginning to the most everyday actions."

"Elevators do away with the heroism of stair climbing so that there is no longer any virtue in living up near the sky."

"All values must remain vulnerable, and those that do not are dead."

"It is striking that the most favourable field for receiving the consciousness of freedom is none other than reverie."

Gaston Bachelard

Enjoy!

Tracey