April is poetry month: what's good and what's not



St.-John Perse

In honour of April poetry month I will post (hopefully every day for the entire month) what's hot and what's not:i.e. a good poem and a bad poem placed one under the other, with some comments on why the one's good and the other's not.

The good...

"...There has always been this clamour, there has al-
ways been this splendour.
    And like a great feat of arms on the march across the
world, like a census of peoples in exodus, like a foundation of
empires in praetorian tumult, ah! like an animation of lips
over the birth of great Books,
    This huge muffled thing loose in the world, and suddenly
growing huger like drunkenness..." (from Exile, St.-John Perse)

and the bad...

I am not chosen
but have applied for the job.
I've always wanted to be a Government
of Canada initiative. Starves his body down
so his erection will be proportionally larger
                                                          (Colin Smith from "Straw Man")
________________

Perse's poetry (even in translation: this excerpt in its original French would have made the Smith blemishes look even more laughable) is epical and yet reachable: beautifully cadenced and yet within reach of the feeling eye. But what an eye Perse requires! Not afraid of repetitions because repetitions always, even to infinity, carry something in the poet's pouch nor even of the lonely journey across the piaggia diserta of the songless world, the poem "grows". Yes, the impression it leaves is of a poem flowering even when the covers close.

Smith's offering, sadly in only one of Canada's two official languages, will always remain the "songless" and certainly not through lack of trying. Here's Kootenay writing school specimen holding up the mirror as 'twere to a very purposeful "hysterical, disavowed and disjunctive" initiative. It's what it is and Canada's just the place for it. ( I redden at it) Drunkenness here is always tantamount to smoking teenage weed.