Just like real life, some poems don’t make sense, at least not immediately. Like the problems in my high school algebra class, there is an unknown factor represented by the letter ‘x’. If you carefully work through the equation you can discover the value of ‘x’.
Surrealistic poems are like that, they make the reader work for meaning. Surrealism began as a cultural movement in the 1920’s when artists, weary and wary of sheer rationalism, allowed their unconscious minds to be expressed through their art. Surrealistic poetry creates an unsettling experience, a clash of moods and images, familiar words used in an unfamiliar way. A surrealistic poem does not tell you something directly but invites you to discover something for yourself. However, surrealistic poems are not simply verbal Rorschach tests. We do not read into it anything we want. We read out of the poem what the poet put there.
There is no such thing as a surrealistic grocery list or medical report or financial statement, although I sometimes find these incomprehensible. That’s because I don’t know how to read them. By learning to read beyond the obvious we can begin to see references and relationships, associations and implications that might offer us another angle from which to see the situation.
Below is a surrealistic look at a poem posted on PBT on April 10, 2020
News
by Warren Gaston
There’s nobody here
At the bar at the church.
The fire’s gone out.
The drinks are on the house,
Literally – on the house.
The first stanza compares a bar with a church.
People come to drink. In a church communion
wine is always on the house. Both church and
bar are empty because they have lost the power
to attract. The fire’s gone out.
Blood sticky slick
Light through window grime
Holy books printed on flypaper,
On masking tape,
On cinder blocks.
The beverage served at the church is the blood of
Christ, blood being sticky like wine when spilled.
Windows can be sticky with grime diminishing the
light. Flypaper and masking tape are both sticky like
minds that can get stuck to holy writing because they
are told to believe, not taught how to think. Without the
benefit of critical thinking, scripture can become a cinder
block weighing us down.
People are talking.
Are you ready to hear?
So much of what we learn is just gossip and untested
opinions, aka; ‘fake news’. Often we are only to ready
to hear,to feed out lust for ‘deep state conspiracies.’
Ready as an empty ash tray
To receive the ashes of today.
In previous times when everyone smoked, ashtrays were
ubiquitous waiting for ashes as our ears are waiting
for the next puff of BREAKING NEWS.
Have you heard what happened to Annabel Lee?
Annabel Lee is a tragic American love poem by Edgar Alan Poe.
This beautiful young woman’s death was caused by envious angels.
There’s no proof but people say.
You heard it before;
The most trusted name in news.
“People say,”