September 6-10. Covey

Having Bruce Covey come into class and give a reading was an interesting experience, but ultimately left me disappointed. By this statement I am not trying to imply that Covey is not a good poet, but he does not appeal to me. Combining found text into poems is very impressive and I’m sure challenging, but I feel that a part of the creative aspect of poetry that I enjoy is absent. I enjoyed some it, but not a lot. His use of google searches was an interesting idea and was sometimes comical, but the numbering before each line, which I heard in quite a few of his poems, was annoying. Sometimes these lists continued on and on giving me a desire for him to quit altogether. His poem entitled “odds,” I believe, was one of these. Hearing him read this very long and repetitive list at a high rate was too much. After a certain period of time the effect of the poem diminished and a tiresome feeling overcame me. Another one of his poems entitled “declaration” used found text from a speech from George W. Bush. He took words which appeared in the speech numerous times and put them in alphabetical order. When taking these words out of context, it completely alters the purpose of the speech. It has no meaning. It’s just a list of words. Any one in contemporary society can connote meaning to these words for they live in this historical time period and are aware of the current situation of the world, but again there is no real meaning. The effect of the speech will still be the same. Those who oppose will oppose and those who agree will still agree. That is the terrible thing about politics, no one is ever happy. By saying this I am taking no stance on the situation, because I have none. I try my best to keep myself completely devoid politics of any sort. Some may believe this to be ignorance, but like them I am allowed to have my opinions, no matter if there are none at all. Back to Covey, if I remember correctly he seemed to speak poorly about love poems; more than once. From hearing him say that in class automatically gave me a distaste for him. This distaste grew when I heard him read a poem he described or was entitled a love poem. I didn’t see the correlation. Why would you say that you feel bad about the person who it was written for. Do feelings and emotions for another person have no meaning to him? If not then he is saying to a large number of people and poets that they are juvenile and need a new basis for writing. Expressing feelings through words whether about love for another, nature, politics, life, death is an essential part of human life. Everything we do is a form of love. Everything you do you do because you want to, like to, or love to. The only thing that I have learned from Bruce Covey, is that I want to keep my poetry and work and thoughts devoid of him.