What EvEn is Experimental Poetry?

Let me start by saying that this blog post is going to be a bit of a ramble. I had an idea in my mind about what I wanted to write, but the second I started typing the title things just got all mixed up for me….

I couldn’t figure out if one should capitalize “even” in the title. I stared at it. I played around with it being lowercase, then uppercase. Then I Googled it, and continued to become more and more confused. Am I using “even” as an adjective, verb, or adverb? Did it matter which one it even was? Should it matter at all? Maybe you reading this know the obvious answer. Maybe this is something that I should have learned in 3rd grade but somehow fell asleep when the lesson was given. The point is that this just confused my brain so much that it made me change the whole direction of this post.

I wanted to go through different definitions and ideas of what experimental poetry is, but now I’m just saying screw it. Why does experimental poetry need a definition, or at least a thought process to make sense of it? It’s supposed to be something different, new, and exciting. It should make us question why we breathe oxygen instead of carbon monoxide, why we can’t just jump really high and soar straight into outer space, and why we can’t imagine a new kind of color even if we try really, really hard.

When I read Dura my mind was handed back to me on an unpolished silver platter. I stared, a cried (inside), I pleaded with Zeus and perhaps even Hades for help, but alas I was left alone, sitting in my desk chair, not sure what to do. But then, just as I was about to renounce my faith in all living creatures, I got it. Or, more accurately, I still didn’t get it, but I appreciated it. Dura is a book comprised of experimental poems. It is different, and fun, and unique. It made me question everything about poems, and how I should feel about them.

Experimental poetry shouldn’t make sense, and if it did then I’m not sure we can label it accordingly. I’m happy I read Dura, and I want to try to open my horizons even further. If anyone has any great suggestions for an anthology I can read please let me know!

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