Beyond the bubble

Okay, that's quite enough poetry for now. Poetry is all well and good if you want a word kiss or kick. The power of the poem is to express a mood moment, like a kiss or a kick. Of course, the best poetry expresses much more subtle and complex mood moments than a kick or a kiss can. Still, if you want to express mood changes and complex emotional developments, you need prose, not poetry...



Now, you see what I did there? I spoke out of my arse, off the top of my head, and from inside my bubble. In fact I know very little about poetry, having barely studied the art form or written very much of it myself.

Much of my inside-the-bubble thinking on poetry comes from reading Sylvia Plath's prose and poetry and deciding that, compared with her prose (The bell jar), the poems are frustratingly floating without context, while at the same time tied to a particular mood and emotion, despite also thinking that Plath's poems are the best poems ever written.

But who am I kidding? I've only read Plath's poems (and the Ancient Mariner); a fairly small bubble.  

I'm exaggerating slightly to make the point that it seems to me it is getting ever easier to be convinced by our own, inside-the-bubble thinking, and overlook just how self-serving these bubbly environments are. This is perhaps self-evident to many, but I think we can all do with a reminder of the limited, bubble-esque nature of our opinions and the need to think beyond the bubble as far as possible.

Or perhaps it's just me and my bubble. Perhaps I should stick to poetry and leave the bubble-popping prose to others who can better see the bigger bubble picture.      

For example, Ricky Gervais. Last bubble-pop word today goes to Ricky defending the "right to be wrong" about religion, and anything else, as a useful prompt for those of us disinclined to think beyond the bubble of our own religious/anti-religious convictions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jYwrgHONSc