There are worlds of difference between real poetry and the crap they teach you in school. Real poetry is about expression and the world are you and all those eternal questions which mankind has been struggling since, well, ever. Writing poetry about your favourite basketball team is, of course, ****. And I hated every minute of it at school. Especially when we were made to analyze poems for their meaning and crap. I reserve the right to think that Picasso was a hack and that T.S.Elliot's poems are terrible. There is no point in art if you
have to like it. If I see no meaning in a painting or a poem, who's to say I'm wrong? Thats what art are all about.
Liberator: Poets, like writers, serve a far more useful purpose in society than any 9 to 5 Joe Schmoe. Why must every contribution to society be tangible? Why is something considered wealth only if you put a fence around it and say "this is mine". Almost anyone here (and anyone in general) is expendable. If you don't put together the widgets, or if you don't write the program code, someone else will. Not so with writers and poets (and artists, philosophers etc), they contribute to the intelectual wealth of society, and I for one consider this to be a greater contribution that merely manufacturing this or serving that. When a writer's works can spark a revolution, or when a singer can stand up to a government, thats important. You build something, and 20 years later its junk. You serve someone at McDonalds, and you think they'll remember you? But if you write, you contribute something to the world which will never fade, which can be a greater weapon than all the guns and all the money you could imagine. Which, in short, can change the world.
With that said, I think
of art is just made by dumbass posers who think they're sophisticated when they splatter ink on a canvas or write some deep-sounding bull****. **** Pollock, and Warhol and Picasso and whatever "post-modernist" jackass happens to be in style. For me, thats not art, its commercialism in a different package. Three red lines on a white background, sorry but art that ain't.
