Ian McLeod writes from the humid depths of Dixie. He owns one of two pairs of Doc Martens in the state of Alabama, salivates at sarcasm, and thinks the mere existence of "The Highlander" is enough to validate the No-True-Scotsman argument. He dislikes long walks on the beach. He lives in a world of confustication and bebotherment, which he discusses at length at ianmcleod.blogspot.com.
This is not a poem; this is a line, and this line contains a title for a poem, namely: “A Poem”
Ian McLeod
Once upon a time
I decided to rhyme.
It was quite fine
to make words mine,
and to turn a phrase
into perfect chrysoprase.
Then all of a sudden,
my friend–who loved muddin’–
came up to me and said,
“This shit’s gone to your head.”
So I decided to retire
and threw my pages on the fire.
But one page I let survive
because five little words–five,
sum up the entirety
of all poetry
if Magritte and Korzybski always had their way.
“Argumentum ad absurdum!” you say?
Yes it is. Yet I still contend:
This is not a poem.
To be honest, my exposure to RAW is pretty limited. He’s on my list of authors I desperately need to read more of, but haven’t had time to. C’est la vie.
One of my friends had Korzybski’s famous quote: “Whatever you say it is, it isn’t” on her Facebook profile, and it got me to reading about the man, and I was so taken with his ideas (and Magritte’s classic “This Is Not A Pipe” painting) that I just had to include it in a poem somehow.
WHAT TO DO NOW?