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RE: SPU Poetry Contest #1: "Poets"
I enjoyed reading the poem. There is an ease to it, its structure and rhythm are well though out. I would suggest having a larger picture or including the poem as text as well, as it can be very difficulty to read the text. I do enjoy the theme - we tend to obsess with all-or-nothing, with this duality, where the Golden Mean is the virtue. Guess us poets are not as fascinated by virtues; we are obsessed with vices.
@poetrybyjeremy,
I thought everyone could zoom-in to enlarge? No? I can't on my laptop (it's a high-end 1987 model), but my daughter can on hers. Folks out there, let me know if you can't enlarge either. If most people can't, I've got some serious re-formatting to do. (Of course ... all this could be another of Crusader-connivance designed to throw me off my game.)
Respecting your remarks about duality, you're dead on. The problem with poetry is the problem with politics ... only the extremes have a voice. You never hear political moderates (at least 80% of the population) reciting poems about their bloody tampons on National TV, do you? (Yuck ... too much information. I'll bet if I wrote a poem about the skidmarks on my underwear, you'd all gag ... but that's because I'm a moderate - and, of me, some measure of sanity is expected.)
But here's the thing: Almost all of life is lived between the extremes. Revolutions are bloody, and bloody expensive, using every metric of the measures of misery. "Break it if it's not broken" has never lead to anything but chaos and anarchy.
Aristotle riffed about this 2,500 years ago. We call his writings on the subject, "Virtue Ethics." Of all the philosophical schools-of-thought that have come and gone since, I have yet to come across anything more reflective of reality.
A small number of people in the world are gifted with the ability to articulate words. More precisely, they possess a natural instinct about how to use meter, rhythm and rhyme (how it's said) to magnify their ideas, ideals and insights (what is said). It's an awesome power when used wisely, an awful power, when not.
Whenever you, as a poet, embark upon a poem "To Change the World:" Ask not, just what you are building; ask too, what you are breaking. Nothing in life is free. For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. Your dream ... is someone else's nightmare.
Words are weapons. Use them wisely.
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