My last post was about the poem “Tom O’ Bedlam and the person on YouTube, Spoken Verse who both recites wonderful poetry and recites poetry wonderfully : ) He is known on-line as, Tom O’ Bedlam.
There are many times when I have thought that there is a strong correlation between poetry and madness. Poems with their confusing metaphors and convoluted phrasing may seem like the rantings of a disturbed mind.
Poetry is often full of fantasy, with disjointed images, that seldom make sense on the first reading. Poems need to be read and re-read. I think of the repetitious musings of the deranged – the rhyme becoming a chant or the lines drifting off into nowhere. One of my favourite poets, e. e. cummings, is a master of this confusion.
Let’s Live Suddenly Without Thinking
E. E. Cummings
let’s live suddenly without thinking
under honest trees,
a stream
does.the brain of cleverly-crinkling
-water pursues the angry dream
of the shore. By midnight,
a moon
scratches the skin of the organised hills
an edged nothing begins to prune
let’s live like the light that kills
and let’s as silence,
because Whirl’s after all:
(after me) love, and after you.
I occasionally feel vague how
vague i don’t know tenuous Now-
spears and The Then-arrows making do
our mouths something red, something tall
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| Scarborough Bluffs |
“The skin of organized hills” – photographers can be a little mad too. Please post any thoughts you have on the topic.