Category: Ars Poetica

Dementia Moderna

Poetry organizes
This chaos inside
My head
Falling
Words
And
Rhythms
|||/|||| || |||
Tumbling
Around my head
5,000 Ad Impressions
Per diem
Rhetoric
Duplicity
Spooks —
Watching me in my head
Everybody’s Judging Me
(This is you…too)
Though I’m swimming through myself
The curtain’s pulled and the
Only Wizard left standing
Is the naked poet, tearing
Down your walls with
Symmetrical condensation
Even if the drops take an
Eternity, they will nourish
The lichen in your mind
And undo your construction
That keeps you from your fellows
And your obligations to your community.

2020 Ars Poetica Poems

Master’s Class

Medieval metaphors made molten
From smelters pour golden inspirations
Forming the meld of American spirit

William Shakespeare shook out the cobble stones
And delivered us the metaphor of morality and love
Psychology and introspection a
History of the rise and fall of Kings.
As this foundation stuck to the ages
And was carried on small wagons across
American plains to fill cold nights with
Tales and poetry opening up the
Minds of young industrious Yankees.

So Whitman took the book and transposed
The old English voice into the rambling
Preamble of the Frontier Epic.
To open the roads to dreams of new beginnings
In a place where Men’s spirit alone can create
Everything he needs to be whole. Here in
The Wild Yonder…where he mends walls with Frost.

A stone’s turn
To William’s rigid
Architecture
Constructed
Modernism
A new rhythm
Inflamed
With Jazz
And a desire
To vanquish
Sentimentalities
And strip
The poetic
Vocal chord
Down
To its
Objective
Objectified
Truth that
Documents but
Leaves the
Spirit
Longing—
The point—
Perhaps in
This dis-
Enfranchised
Voice
song without
It’s own desires —
attachments

2020 American Place Ars Poetica Poems

Ink Think

The only one
who thinks in poetry
is seemingly me. 
(surprisingly)

Perhaps it’s you
who thinks
in broken lines,
metaphors and ink.

But to the rest
I must plainly digress
into lyric rust

For on the shelf
These prisoners ||\|||\
(pioneers)
must sit
until they’re unhinged \_/

Or read aloud
to a half-listening crowd
Seeking
Enlightenment?

2020 American Place Ars Poetica Poems

WCW (Metercratic Oath)

Got it right, got it right
Doctor Williams
Got it right

The trick is in the meter
solid rhythm, perfect beat
Well balanced measure
Pluck the string elegan’ly

Don’t forget the tercet
A quatrain will suffice

Just keep it in just meter
Or the critics will complain
That you have made no mastery
Of that which Williams claimed

Yet me I like my brevity
And dabble in vain rhymes
But The meter,
O the meter
I will take
and
do no harm.

2019 Ars Poetica Footnotes Poems Why

Poetry is dead?

I don’t
Want to practice
A dead art.

But you are practicing it
So how can it be dead?

Gone from the memory
Of the people. Lost
Are the words to them.
Confused by broken
Syntax and boiled down
Meanings. Un-reflected
Lives don’t contemplate
Their own depravity in
The face of those surrounding them.
Not enough words for
Comprehension available.

A failing of the Academies?

Lost to glowing gods
That speak of everything
And say nothing. No food
Left for the spirit of inquiry
Lost focus of the digitized mind.

Alas, poetry is dead unless we can resuscitate the culture.

Ars Philosophica Ars Poetica

Criticism

Criticism in 2019 is bordering on cruel often seeking to dismantle credibility in the eye of the beholder.

Critical (Analysis) Critiqué (Peer review)

The critic (Siskel and Ebert) is very usually the failed artist. One who knows enough about a form from their own experiments, but orient towards the analysis of said art. I am not saying that I am not open to criticism. Though I prefer to wield it against myself and to question my heroes. I myself a degreed and proper student of literature with an expensive education in letters that is only useful now that I have made a living doing other things. Analysis is perhaps a better word these days. Not so rife with the darkness, our sardonic state of dialogue.

The art of poetry has been dissected, de-constructed, rebuilt, reconstituted, regurgitated, fight over it and derided as unacceptable. I doubt
I offer anything new to its discussion, but I am very interested that poetry not go the way of Latin. I don’t want to practice a dead art.

Ars Poetica

4 Pillars

Think of the
line break
as the natural
flow of your breath.
How does your speech
give cadence?

Ars Poetica 4 Pillars
Clarity | Mystery | Memory | History

2019 Ars Poetica Breaking Muse Poems

Do it

Post author By Makar
Post date November 9, 2019
No Comments on Do it

Write me something
Make it quick
Make it quicken
Make it thick
Phat with meaning
Pierce the soul
Get right to it
Start a scroll
Share your story
Tell a tale
Paint a picture
Be angry, yell
Just do it, damnit!
Give us your words
We’ll run the gamut
Beautiful to absurd.
Yes, write me a poem
Write it good, right it bad
Present us with something
Mad, glad or fad.

“Are you done with this?”

American Place Ars Philosophica Ars Poetica

Speechless

A Place without a People is Speechless.

American Place Ars Poetica Breaking Muse Footnotes Why

Command and Conquer

As I have been going through my recent practice and development of form, you will see a recurring capture of language. To some it may sound like I have some love for the cliche. But, I am drawing from William Carlos Williams here. I want to document the language. Capture the most common and local forms of reference. In my case that’s a southwestern mashup of red neck American English and Mexican Spanish.
I assure you it is intentional and if it’s off putting, good. Then, I’ve got your attention. Place without people is speechless.