Wait! You should read the poem first. Find it here.
After reading my latest poem, Divine Herring, my wife had only one thing to say: “I don’t get it.” After some discussion, however, she seemed to pretend to appreciate my work a little more and said she might even make an effort to read it a second time. Yes, isn’t she so supportive?
And since I love support, I thought explaining myself to all my loyal readers might be worth a shot, even if it requires breaking my heretofore unstated belief that poems should not require explanation and, thereby, calls me out as a poor poet, a poor explainer of poems, and — hell, why not, while we’re at it? — a writer of unnecessarily long sentences.
You see, poetry — at least to me — is one piece art, one piece wordsmanship (which, like swordsmanship, has resulted in many cutting deaths, but which, unlike swordsmanship, suffers from fewer fans, fewer martial arts devoted to it, and fewer esses), and finally, but most importantly, one very large piece bullshit. Yes, without bullshit I would be nothing. An example from the current poem in question may help elucidate this.
The first piece I came up with for Divine Herring was the title. At least I believe I came up with it; I often have no idea where these things come from which makes me fear I’ve simply read it elsewhere and since forgotten. For all I know, I’ve just plagiarized an entire poem about…well, we’ll get to what it’s about in a moment.
Anyway, I was enthralled with the title for the sheer nonsense of it. It quite reminded me of Douglas Adams’ “Salmon of Doubt” which I have yet to read but I’m sure is quite funny. Any time I can remind myself of the late Mr. Adams, it’s a good day.
And on this good day, with this particular poem, I proceeded to invent a nonsense rhyme and then a nonsense verse which ultimately became the skeleton (or fishbone, if you will) of the poem.
A few more nonsense verses later, and the poem sounded quite fun when spoken, but, of course, it made no sense. Like most poems I write, there was no purpose or meaning to it until well after I’d begun. Yes, this is where that pile of bullshit I mentioned earlier comes into play.
When I first sit down to write, I’m just there to have fun. After some amount of effort is expended, however, I quickly decide that I want to come out of this with something worthwhile. Nonsense poems rarely are.
So I pull out the bullshit and start looking for spaces in the poem which could use some filler, and I begin spackling over. Divine Herring implied religion right from the get-go, and the symbolism of a fish fit swimmingly with this topic.
The nonsense fish evolved, darwin-style, into an albatross of ideas which weighs down the speaker of the poem until he can’t stand it any more. But that wasn’t enough for me; I wanted to know where the fish came from and what the speaker did about it.
I added a mysterious man to the story who thrusts the herring upon the speaker. This man, of course, is a preacher/priest/rabbi/etc. or, stretching it further, society in general. In fact, I began to think, why limit this to religion? Everyday we are all weighed down by the belief systems and arbitrary rules of others. Every day we have to adjust ourselves to conform to societal norms. Every one of us has a red herring wrapped around our throats, suffocating and distracting us from what really matters in life.
And here I shall pause, for I hope you will have noticed the subtle yet brilliant aphorism I have just worked in regarding a herring and societal distraction, and I assume you will need some time to appreciate this deeply clever bit of wordsmanship (you still think I cannot kill without a blade?).
Recovered have you? Well I’m still patting myself on the back, so please bear with me. You see what I’ve done, don’t you? The herring, which was formerly a nonsense item in a silly poem, has been elevated to a religious symbol and then further still to represent beliefs which distract all of humanity from the reality of the lives they are living. This is really deep shit!
Which brings me back to my point that bullshit is a crucial tool in any artists’ tool belt. Knowing this, I encourage you to use your newfound appreciation for my poetry — and art in general — to delve deeper. As you read a book or listen to a piece of classical music, look deeper and try to identify the bullshit. The more you practice, the better you’ll get. Soon you’ll see bullshit all over the place. That is, after all, humanity’s most practiced art form.
