Poetry: morphing electronic words serendipity online Written a few minutes ago. 1-22-2004 The poetry lives on and I haven't stopped writing. It is now 5:45 PM pst on Thursday evening, January 22, 2004. I reread words from the above introductions, from 1972 and 1982 respectively, and can't even believe that I have aged. I feel exactly the same, have the same revelations, the same old questions, and the same feeling that somehow I have been given a gift which I haven't yet figured out how to open. There are three more introductions I might or might not add to this page. One is from 1974, and gives a detailed analysis of my "Suicide Poems". I explicated freely quite a few poems which substantially or offhandedly dealt with the subject of my own suicide, and served to give the dictum that since I wrote so vehemently about it, I would never have to accomplish the act. The first two pages of this introduction are missing. I probably began transcribing it and misplaced the pages in another binder of poetry or prose somewhere. I'll find them ten years from now. Another introduction is from 1977 in my really wiggy drugged out period, and doesn't make much sense. Neither of these will probably see publication. The third introduction is from 1980, and I use the words written in this introduction for the chapter headings for each year's verse listings on the site.. I have always believed my poetic gift was special, I have always shared my volumes, and still I crave readers, and I love to hear how some of the poems are able to touch a soul. The poem "Tragedy" written the morning of September 12, 2001 inspired many, and I still treasure the entries in the guestbook on that page. I still think these poetic insights of mine matter,and even though the flow of words is merely a trickle at times, hopefully the words which I do write are somewhat meaningful. I've always believed that by "time-stamping" my poetry, and by chronologically listing the verse in the volumes and on-line gives the reader a sense of how one soul has travelled, experienced, loved, and lost, and given voice to what was happening as it was, and still is, happening. I still feel a rich rewarding surge of creative insight every now and then. Lately, the poems have become "history lessons" detailing the rift in humankind, and hopefully through verse I will find a way, museless or not, to empathize with humanity, and maybe become instrumental in causing my brothers to sit down and learn to live together before everyone kills everyone else. I have always thought I was able, like Shakespeare's Hamlet, to see both sides of any story, and I want to illustrate both ways of looking at a situation. I still feel sorry for mankind, because he can't learn to live together and appreciate that he will never agree. It's hopeless to fight, and he keeps killing himself. Nobody is listening to me yet, and those that do are doing the best they can in life to love thy neighbor and live together with him peacefully. So the poetry marches on, as it were. I quote the words directly below from the introduction written in 1980. MFN 1-22-04 "Suffice it to say that the poet charts life, however inconsistent, with truth, and, as poets in the past have attempted, to infuse this truth with beauty, and create art. "Sometimes he succeeds, and only so if the reader can recognize him or herself for the poet truly believes all thought processes are universal, and poets are merely the gifted few who mouth that universality. "If the reader can understand by charting the poet's feelings throughout life, his link, and ultimately mankind's link with the universal mind, then the poet's purpose has been fulfilled. "No poem is ever truly complete. ..because life rarely if ever can be called complete." MFN 3-13-80 I think I feel I cry I shout And I don't know What the hell I'm talking about ..................(a moment of introspection 12-12-77) |
On Poetry The words escaping from my lips Have seen the light of day before- The apple of my love's delight Has never shown it's core. And as I read those words I wrote They seem to mean less now For as I have more things to say, I've just forgotten how. I'm all mixed up inside, you see. Though I've said that too, I know. And as I sit with turbulent mind My words find it hard to flow. I cannot say why I want to scream Or why I'm crying, too. Or why I think I'll never make sense To anyone else or you. written December 27, 1975 I am a painted canvas Which you will have to read And when you scratch the paint To find out if I'm a copy Then you will either love or hate me And I cannot tell you What will be the end result Because I am such a bad analyst When I try to analyze myself. The Analyst, also12.27.75 Let us resolve the situation Close the book and end the show Let's touch each other with our eyes And find out all that we don't know written November 25, 1978 Lover's little stranger Sitting by the roadside Hoping all his dreams come true. Making up his fantasies Wallowing in worries Not much more can turn him blue from Song About A Man I Know 1971 It began at a timeworn desk, one of hundreds just like it, in a rubberstamped schoolroom in a rubberstamped town in a rubberstamped world with a rubberstamped mind......Mine. I began writing words which rhymed and had a sort of rhythm, owrds which in some prehistoric way and to my prehistoric mind conveyed a sense of explanation about my situation and the world around me. As time advanced and my vocabulary grew, and as other rubberstamped institutions attempted to mold my malleable mind like silly putty into societal acceptance, more words and phrases spilled from my brain to my notebooks, asking, answering, ad alleviating my naive, juvenile fears. Love, justice, honor, all the old cliches took on an intense meaning. I felt I would fall in love. Alas, I took great pains to, but like all cliches, in time love justice and honor and a host of their brothers and sisters ran and reran themselves out of the projector and into the ground. Time, a pretty well placed cliche itself, bore me less and less themes. My notebooks mildewed and fell away. I prospered, rubberstamping my unique nonindividuality upon everything I did, making countless acquaintences which I naively believed were friendships, spouting countless cliched judgements and dogmas which I mistakenly believed were my own, and at some times I actually took out my poetry books and rubberstamped a stanza or two onto the printed page. Events which stood out as boggling to my mind inevitably found themselves rewritten into tired themes on my notebook paper. As life itself taught me its own cliched truths, the rubber in my stamp began to wear away. Where I was once analytical, yet thought provoking and loving, hopeful, trusting in my poetry, I became cynical, attaching myself thematically to death and hate, consequently harboring little desire to communicate with the people I'd thought I needed all my life. Where my book of poetry, my "volume of experience", my "life on paper" once meant so much to my fledgeling writer's aura, it became a mocking, whining voice from the past, proving to me more and more that the more I reached out to touch humanity, the more humanity saw fit to recoil. Finally, I broke the bond. I proclaimed "I don't need people" "I don't need poetry." I covered myself with a blanket of mistrust and drowned myself in alcohol, occasionally admitting to myself, but to no one else, that I was utterly wrong. From the frying pan into the fire. The pendulum swings all the way to the left, then all the way to the right. The present. I am nearly two months sober. I still look at most people with distrust. I question myself and my world most wholeheartedly. What better time to pull out the old volumes: dust the pages off, and try to find myself again. It is a new year, a new situation. There is really no need for me to drown my inadequacies in cynicism now. I've accomplished what little I think I can in life, and now it's time to sit down and write again. Let the questions make way for answers and the cliches make room for reality. For many years, I actually believed myself to be prophetic, a gifted chronicler of the human condition. Then when humanity grabbed me by the lapels, and proclaimed, "I'm not what you think I am." I stopped believing in myself. I am only me. I do have a talent for words. And I should never forget that. I also have a need for humanity. Someday soon I'll satisfy that need. For a while, I forgot my poems. I should have been reading them. I'll remain "lover's little stranger" but I'll have a pen in my hand again. Michael F. Nyiri 5-6 PM. December 29th, 1982 Lomita, CA. (about ten years since the first introduction below.) |
Poetry, A Loosely Constructed Essay Written by MIchael F. Nyiri at 19 years of age in 1972. When two people meet, they notice only that outer covering called the "skin" and only a "pinch" of personality. They fail to realize that the one standing across from them is not a walking doll, but a human being with fears, hopes, achievements, and failures, a paradox on two legs, a ,map of life. We so seldom think of others, we say we do, but we feel sorry for ourselves even more so. The casual passerby who asks for the time is as much a person as we are, yet we fail to realize this. He has porobably fallen in and out of love, witnessed tragedy, and pulled through an accident barely alive also. The poet accomplishes two things in this world of people. He writes about himself and others. Writing about life is difficult, but it forces others to realize people are "here', they are living, they are alive. No poet is perfect. They all try very hard, though. A poem is a thought or an emotion, expressed through the eyes of the poet. Some poems are written in a month, a year, others in a moment. Poems diagram a small bit of life. Each poem is a heartbeat on an oscilliscope. Each poem is a small part of a great whole. The poet can only be biased. He can't help it. Even though he may try, he only "knows" himself. He only tries to write about others, and the poem only proclaims what he thought at the time he wrote it. This collection spans a few years. When the poet is extremely young, he hardly knows his own feelings. The poems are merely versed stories, most with no content other than entertainment. The poems grow in insight with time. Some are bad only because they are not understood. No poem is really good if it tries to imitate a moment in life. The poet is extremely fortunate if people understand what he feebly attempts to say. A poem may or may not rhyme, it may or may not have punctuation, or strict meters. What it does have is one feeling or thought, one bit of mind of the poet. A poem is only a group of words. They may be constructed in any number of ways, but they only try ot convey, to communicate with others one facet of life. Whether they succeed is up to life itself. MFN 1972 |
Poetry: morphing electronic words serendipity online Written a few minutes ago. 1-22-2004 The poetry lives on and I haven't stopped writing. It is now 5:45 PM pst on Thursday evening, January 22, 2004. I reread words from the above introductions, from 1972 and 1982 respectively, and can't even believe that I have aged. I feel exactly the same, have the same revelations, the same old questions, and the same feeling that somehow I have been given a gift which I haven't yet figured out how to open. There are three more introductions I might or might not add to this page. One is from 1974, and gives a detailed analysis of my "Suicide Poems". I explicated freely quite a few poems which substantially or offhandedly dealt with the subject of my own suicide, and served to give the dictum that since I wrote so vehemently about it, I would never have to accomplish the act. The first two pages of this introduction are missing. I probably began transcribing it and misplaced the pages in another binder of poetry or prose somewhere. I'll find them ten years from now. Another introduction is from 1977 in my really wiggy drugged out period, and doesn't make much sense. Neither of these will probably see publication. The third introduction is from 1980, and I use the words written in this introduction for the chapter headings for each year's verse listings on the site.. I have always believed my poetic gift was special, I have always shared my volumes, and still I crave readers, and I love to hear how some of the poems are able to touch a soul. The poem "Tragedy" written the morning of September 12, 2001 inspired many, and I still treasure the entries in the guestbook on that page. I still think these poetic insights of mine matter,and even though the flow of words is merely a trickle at times, hopefully the words which I do write are somewhat meaningful. I've always believed that by "time-stamping" my poetry, and by chronologically listing the verse in the volumes and on-line gives the reader a sense of how one soul has travelled, experienced, loved, and lost, and given voice to what was happening as it was, and still is, happening. I still feel a rich rewarding surge of creative insight every now and then. Lately, the poems have become "history lessons" detailing the rift in humankind, and hopefully through verse I will find a way, museless or not, to empathize with humanity, and maybe become instrumental in causing my brothers to sit down and learn to live together before everyone kills everyone else. I have always thought I was able, like Shakespeare's Hamlet, to see both sides of any story, and I want to illustrate both ways of looking at a situation. I still feel sorry for mankind, because he can't learn to live together and appreciate that he will never agree. It's hopeless to fight, and he keeps killing himself. Nobody is listening to me yet, and those that do are doing the best they can in life to love thy neighbor and live together with him peacefully. So the poetry marches on, as it were. I quote the words directly below from the introduction written in 1980. MFN 1-22-04 "Suffice it to say that the poet charts life, however inconsistent, with truth, and, as poets in the past have attempted, to infuse this truth with beauty, and create art. "Sometimes he succeeds, and only so if the reader can recognize him or herself for the poet truly believes all thought processes are universal, and poets are merely the gifted few who mouth that universality. "If the reader can understand by charting the poet's feelings throughout life, his link, and ultimately mankind's link with the universal mind, then the poet's purpose has been fulfilled. "No poem is ever truly complete. ..because life rarely if ever can be called complete." MFN 3-13-80 I think I feel I cry I shout And I don't know What the hell I'm talking about ..................(a moment of introspection 12-12-77) |
