Frank Vincent Zappa, the highly quotable band leader of The Mothers of Invention, was a man of many, many wonderful talents. He once said:
“The most important thing in art is the frame. for painting: literally; for other arts: figuratively-- because, without this humble appliance, you can't know where The Art stops and The Real World begins. You have to put a 'box' around it because otherwise, what is that s... on the wall?”
I've made no bones over the years about my distaste for most of the works in prose I've encountered, with some notable exceptions. I've even tried my hand at writing in prose in order to better understand that form and to expand beyond my own boundaries. Still, I am mostly unimpressed.
The boundaries I've insisted on in my own work, ever since I was 11 years old, are my Frame, my form: unforced rhyming, strict meter, and that a poem is understandable, even if it takes a little pondering. Prose, that underling to poetry, only rarely affords some of that.
The modern pushback against "the old ways" of Iambic Pentameter and it's lyrical nuances can be squarely laid on the doormat of Charles Bukowski who had great difficulty getting his raw approach to writing noticed and published. He is quoted as insisting that, "Proper poetry is dead poetry even if it looks good." ... sigh ...
Well, quite frankly, Frank Zappa was spot on!!!
“The most important thing in art is the frame. for painting: literally; for other arts: figuratively-- because, without this humble appliance, you can't know where The Art stops and The Real World begins. You have to put a 'box' around it because otherwise, what is that s... on the wall?”
I've made no bones over the years about my distaste for most of the works in prose I've encountered, with some notable exceptions. I've even tried my hand at writing in prose in order to better understand that form and to expand beyond my own boundaries. Still, I am mostly unimpressed.
The boundaries I've insisted on in my own work, ever since I was 11 years old, are my Frame, my form: unforced rhyming, strict meter, and that a poem is understandable, even if it takes a little pondering. Prose, that underling to poetry, only rarely affords some of that.
The modern pushback against "the old ways" of Iambic Pentameter and it's lyrical nuances can be squarely laid on the doormat of Charles Bukowski who had great difficulty getting his raw approach to writing noticed and published. He is quoted as insisting that, "Proper poetry is dead poetry even if it looks good." ... sigh ...
Well, quite frankly, Frank Zappa was spot on!!!
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