Someone once told me that the use of imagery and symbolic language is the refuge of the compositionally incompetent. I shrugged it this aphorism off as the creation of a mind all too fond of order and precise or careful descriptions. However, I recently came to a series of realizations: This blog, a sort of public journal, easier to keep up with because I have an audience other than myself for my immense wit, is also different from a journal: because I know that occasionally other people read it, it's sort of like facebook -- a social interaction without the bother of interacting with anyone socially. It is a refuge for my social incompetence, or laziness. Poetry, on the other hand, is the medum to which I turn when I do not wish to articulate my feelings in precise prose. I tell myself that I am trying to avoid diminishing complex feelings, feelings that are not capturable by normative grammar. Perhaps, though, poetry is simply my refuge when I do not wish to confront my feelings, to encapsulate them in overly didactic or scientifically objective language, when I would rather paint them into a beautiful or dark or fanciful image, veiling myself in the mystery I so angstily aspire to and the angst I so annoyedly reject.
In other news, I watched Pride and Prejudice this evening. The new one, with Kira Knightley. I didn't think anyone could top the BBC version which I love like a crotchety old man. But while less true to the original Jane Austin, it is a beautiful piece of cinematography.
Too bad I'm not a film student. Perhaps I would abandon poetry for a much more, er, accessible art.
PS. poetry: from the French poème, from Old French, from Latin poema, from Greek poima, from poiein, to create.
That's me. A creator. Or a creatress?
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