Dank Poetry Memes

I understand where Rene Char is coming from, he means to say that poetry is always with someone or apart of them. However, that is not the case. Marriage is a commitment that is meant to last a life time, whereas poetry is just how someone feels at a given time, something funny, or something that will make a person think. Furthermore, some poems are less than twenty words (who would marry that?). At any given time, someone could simply lose interest in a poem, "divorcing" it and moving on from.  However, it would be simpler to just date a poem instead.

Dating a poem would be the more sensible than marrying it. Dating isn't permanent, although its still a commitment in where you have to fully understand each other inside and out to get any enjoyment out of each other, like in a marriage. However, dating is less serious, you can just stop seeing each other if you don't see eye to with each other. You aren't bound by a ring and some laws to "love" someone forever even if you lost interest. You and the poem would simply just drift apart, perhaps meeting every now and then to go over the good old times of the green eggs and ham you shared in a boat, in a box, and with a fox...

To me poetry should be free flowing and not a commitment. If you are in love with a poem, you are simply dating it, because the love for the words you've written on a page aren't necessarily going to stay (although they very well could). Poetry is a dance, something sporadic and sudden, or possibly slow and flowing. In order for a person and poetry to truly be happy, they must seek out other people and share what they have to offer. They must not be tied down to one, but experience others.

Poetry Problem A
Austin Chen

Flying at Night
Ted Kooser

Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations.
Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies
like a snowflake falling on water. Below us,
some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death,
snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn
back into the little system of his care.
All night, the cities, like shimmering novas,
tug with bright streets at lonely lights like
his.

Far away, a galaxy dies "like a snowflake falling on water". Incredibly quiet that it is nearly impossible to hear, but the ripple it creates spreads throughout the universe, causing the farmer to feel the chill of "distant death".

van Gogh's Starry Night emits a feeling of tranquility with it's deep dark colors. Similar to Flying at Night, it paints a picture of stars above, and a constellation of town lights below. It is easy to imagine Kooser's bird flying over this exact town. And yet, with the feeling of peace, the imposing black trees with their wavy tendrils reflect a feeling of death. The trees appear to be evergreens, which tend to symbolize longevity and solitude. But when colored in black, they symbolize the death of an ever-living being, just like the galaxy's death in Flying at Night.

Both Flying at Night and Starry Night paint similar scenes, and though they aren't related, they are synonymous in many ways.