Poetry, pt 2

Okay.

With music and poetry, there are those set aside as the greats, the classics, and are immune to any sorry criticism I assign to the art in general. In music, for example, it's the Beethoven, the Mozart, Bach, Abbess Hildegard von Bingen, etc. In poetry, it is all the aforementioned greats in Whitney's rather vocal response to the previous kaleidoscope entry.

I was of a more contemporary mindset when I made my claim that 98% of poetry isn't all that great. I still hold that a majority of it is crap, but a majority of songwriting is crap too. People have lost a sense of the beauty of language, and have gotten into the business of manufacturing something commercial (or lazy), rather than create something of worth.

Music and poetry both suffer from similar ailments in the world- some is far more beautiful than most will give it credit for, or take the time to understand, but there are also those songs and poems (novels, movies...) that are heralded as "great" and are totally over-rated, sometimes just plain weird. It's not my place to be on the front lines of preserving the beauty of language, but it bothers me that so much mediocrity is so readily accepted by the consuming public, as far as any art is concerned.

We live in a society of wasted words. With songwriting I do my best not to contribute to that, but I am nothing great. And I don't claim to be.