Friday, May 28, 2010

About my Poems: Tense, Familiarity, and I-You Style (Essay)

Dear Readers:

Sometimes people are not sure what to make of my poetic works because of the personal first person tense, the familiar tone, and the style I sometimes write them in.

For example, I often write poems in a narrative first person style, as if speaking to another person or observing the beloved. In a sense they are rightfully an 'utterance'. Sometimes the poems are about a true spiritual Goddess (in my poetry when I use the term "Goddess" with a capital 'G" I am referring to some archetypal spiritual Goddess manifestation, and when I use the term 'goddess' with a small 'g" I am referring to a mortal woman, a specific woman I have encountered, as a local manifestation of Goddess). Equally my poems might be about the anima (Carl Jung's sense of such), or adoration to some feminine form expressed and seen in the world of this poet.

Because I Have studied so much about dialogue and Martin Buber's I and Thou world of the 'between' (the intersubjective ), my poems are often written in an I and You style.

Again, this is for two reasons--because I believe there in that between, is where reality and mind is framed, and again, because I hope people can read them out loud to someone they love. Reading them aloud as I wrote them, with even the short lines, (yes one word lines) I have drafted them in, as pauses, is the way I intended them to be read.

Hence the 'you' in the poem is not a personal address of you from me unless you understood my work and it has been presented to you formerly in a private manner.--T.K.

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