04/07/2022
You've seen those funny labels on your mattress: "Unlawful to remove."
When I began to write poetry around the age of 60, after a hiatus of 40 odds years since my retirement from the craft after my freshman year at Brown, I always was casting around for a "poetic encounter"--one way of describing (one way) that a poet begins a poem. In this case, the muse was the mattress tag.
The poet in the Great Tradition of meter and rhyme does not have to find, each time, a "poetic," "moving," art-worthy subject. Because the poetry is not the subject, but in the craft. The "poetry" is in the instructions on the page as to how the poem is to be read. The poem exists only when heard (although often in the theater of the mind).
And so, this poem about "unlawful to remove" was one of the first I wrote in my rebirth as a poet:
Unlawful to Remove
Although each Heart must meet
Exacting specifications,
Regarding product life
We make no representations.
We are not liable
For items locked in Heart
For periods outside ranges
Set forth in nearby chart.
Though storage can discolor,
Blur or fade some images,
Maker is held harmless
For resulting damages.
Use care when elements
Known to be combustible
Are commingled in the Heart;
Maker is not liable.
The Heart will open easily
With your Personal Password;
Though warranty does not cover
Lost words or the costs incurred.
Maker welcomes comments
Consumers may impart
For new creative uses.
And thanks for choosing Heart.
I came across this little poem just this evening as I re-edited and reformatting my recently published "Collected Poems," for a corrected edition.
I may drop perhaps 20 percent of the poems to make the paperback version cheaper on Amazon, and because even my best poems have little chance of becoming part of the record of poets in English.
If, say, 1000 of my Facebook friends bought the book, causing Amazon to sit up straight and start promoting it, and so attracting readers, and attracting more promotion--the entire calculus might change. And in years to come, lovers of poetry might know that in an age of dogmatic adherence to "free verse," and "poetry slams" (almost all about Left identity politics), the Great Tradition lived.
Because the ideas of Ayn Rand both inspired a poet's understanding of the defining characteristic of the arts and the subject-matter that the poet loved.
If one copy of my Collected Poems sells next week, I will know that my Facebook friends are listening.
The Collected Poems
