greatpoetry | Not Getting Closer -- Jack Gilbert (Reply)

Not Getting Closer -- Jack Gilbert

Walking in the dark streets of Seoul
under the almost full moon.
Lost for the last two hours.
Finishing a loaf of bread
and worried about the curfew.
I have not spoken for three days
and I am thinking, "Why not just
settle for love? Why not just
settle for love instead?"

I see a lot of wonderful poetry here, almost every day, but the more I read Gilbert or Cohen or Daniel Halpern (the list goes on, but it's short), the more I feel that poetry should be simpler. That ideas shouldn't obfuscate themselves through language. That this is an apple and I want to eat it and that this idea is simple and beautiful and that it needn't be said any other way. Agreed, there is no one way to write poetry and these opinions are personal but still, there's something to be said about poetry devoid of linguistic embellishments. The Chinese monks did it best with their minimalism and simplicity. Kenneth Rexroth is the closest I've seen to that zen-like writing. Take, for example:

THE ADVANTAGES OF LEARNING -- Kenneth Rexroth

I am a man with no ambitions
And few friends, wholly incapable
Of making a living, growing no
Younger, fugitive from some just doom.
Lonely, ill-clothed, what does it matter?
At midnight I make myself a jug
Of hot white wine and cardamon seeds.
In a torn grey robe and old beret,
I sit in the cold writing poems,
Drawing nudes on the crooked margins,
Copulating with sixteen year old
Nymphomaniacs of my imagination.

Another poet who should be mentioned is Gary Snyder:

For Lew Welch In A Snowfall
--Gary Snyder

Snowfall in March:
I sit in the white glow reading a thesis
About you. Your poems, your life.

The author's my student,
He even quotes me.

Forty years since we joked in a kitchen in Portland
Twenty since you disappeared.

All those years and their moments—
Crackling bacon, slamming car doors,
Poems tried out on friends,
Will be one more archive,
One more shaky text.

But life continues in the kitchen
Where we still laugh and cook,
Watching snow.

Anyway, this is not a dissent or an attack on other poets. In fact, some of my best liked writers do not fall into this zen-like-poetry category but I have begun to be attracted to this simple, clear style of writing a lot more lately.