sin cere.

there is something to be said about sincerity in poetry.

i think it's a "pre-"prerequisite. an over obvious pre-starting point. like a list for making fried rice would state rice, oil etc, but won't include the wok becoz it's understood. sincerity only matters if the poet is any good. becoz ultimately, almost all poetry is sincere, but it doesnt, by any stretch of will, make the poem good. in fact, sincerity is also an important ingredient in bad poetry.

i echo harold bloom's (who quoted oscar wilde) statement that sincerity isnt nearly enough to generate poems. yesyes, while as an aspirant, i may be guilty of flouting the rules (badly) sometimes, but as a reader, it is my right to claim bloom's stance.

skill/talent/meaning/execution cannot be put aside merely because we feel the poet was sincere in the protrayal of his theme (often political or with social baggage). the sincerity of his theme cannot be bigger than the rest of it or else the poem will be sunk by its ambitions.

yes, i've been reading bloom. haha. and cross referencing his introduction in best of the best american poetry (1984) where he makes a spirited rant against how people read and judge poetry by the wrong criteria.

tess gallagher says something to that effect about too many new poets using the sympathy for the tragedies in their lives as currency to buy readership. the "me-me" rant is so american.

thats what i been thinking about.

good news in the local poetry scene - excellent new entrant (well, to me new lah) in the form of a ms grace chua, the recent softblow update saw 3 interesting pieces from this lady and i must say one thing:

f-*, i was writing crap crap crap at her age. brillant stuff.

see esp. the 2nd poem, homesick. wow. nice. a simple repetitive poem, that has a banger of a closing line, an interesting progression of the repeated line with meaning and all that in 20 concise lines.

major cool.

other news: at present time, still trying to decipher american mentality. encountered something strange, why does the world's most capitalistic country have such protectionistic rules? the norway guys were trying to set up the system today at the convention hall, when a couple of them thought it be a good idea to focus the projector on their own using a ladder they borrowed from the other booth. well, end result, a $500 fine from the trade union for doing something the rigger/setup crew have to do. and they used 11 people to set up 4 parcans; 1 to each parcan, 1 to direct them from the floor, 1 to advise the guy directing them, and god knows where the rest were. talk about american efficiency. well, at least they looked garung.

and to add to last night fiasco with the room reservations, we were locked out of the room today again. apparently we weren't in the room last night, we never appeared, the receipt issued to us last night was a mysterious unexplainable event, so was how our luggage got into the room, how we somehow mysteriously got our keycards and according to the system, we didnt appear until just now when i started speaking harshly to people. however, the system did somehow remember that we had to pay for last night.

i can't remember how many times the same guy asked for our names. f-*, i thought i had bad short term memory.

and the statistics are wrong, 1 in 3 people here are not obese. 1 in 3 people here are considerably healthy. the rest are miraculously alive. i feel thin here. :) how their planes take off, and how they manage to shove their butts through the aisle i have no f-* idea, but i am impressed. diabetic medication must do well here.

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listening to: jason mraz - geek in pink (when in rome do as the romans, when in america, pls deposit your cow senses at the customs [livestock restrictions] and it will mailed back to when you leave the country, thank you and have a nice day.)