Lumpy pudding
Judging a poem is like judging a pudding or a machine. One demands that it work. Poetry succeeds because all or most of what is said or implied is relevant; what is irrelevant has been excluded, like lumps from pudding and 'bugs' from machinery. (Wimsatt & Beardsley)
Here we celebrate the excluded, lumpy parts of the pudding!
Phil Whalen: The Bay Trees Were About to Bloom
For each of us there is a place
Wherein we will tolerate no disorder.
We habitually clean and reorder it,
But we allow many other surfaces and regions
To grow dusty, rank and wild.
So I walk as far as a clump of bay trees
Beside the creek’s milky sunshine
To hunt for words under the stones
Blessing the demons also that they may be freed
From Hell and demonic being
As I might be a cop, “Awright, move it along, folks,
It’s all over, now, nothing more to see, just keep
Moving right along”
I can move along also
“Bring your little self and come on”
What I wanted to see was a section of creek
Where the west bank is a smooth basalt cliff
Huge tilted slab sticking out of the mountain
Rocks on the opposite side channel all the water
Which moves fast, not more than a foot deep,
Without sloshing or foaming.
— Tassajara, 1J:ii79
