depth no depth

i just met with some local poets at a nearby beer garden to share poems and, yep, drink beer.  the beers were quite good.  they were all micro and specialty beers served in various sized glasses and tumblers, depending on the variety and the vintage.  the menu was a wall sized chalkboard with details on each brew, such as alcohol content and style, like an IPA or weizen [i think that's how it's spelled].  i read about a legendary brew called PLINY THE ELDER.  i had that one.  good, yes, but it was served in a 2.5 ounce glass.  i suppose one is supposed to sip a PLINY THE ELDER rather than chug it.  i get that.  but not only do i love a good beer but i love drinking a good beer.  bring me a bigger glass!

home now and since i only had two beers i am drinking a lagunitas IPA.  a delicious brew with an alcohol content of 6.2%.  fairly high but not too much.  the beers i had at the beer garden were only about 2% higher alcohol content.  a few brews get too rich.  lagunitas has a brew called A LITTLE SUMP'N SUMP'N that i can't drink because it has an alcohol content of over 8%, and that just knocks me on my ass and makes me feel like shit the next day.

well, anyway, the poems read tonight were as varied as the personalities that wrote them.  we had a long conversation about historical verity and the rights to own particular pieces of our shared history.  how deep does one want to get regarding a subject.  would a poem be better served if the writer angled his piece not toward ownership -- in this case it was the holocaust -- of that moment of history but to a confession of it being outside his ken.

in other words, the piece in question was a documentary poetics recording the horrors of a moment in WWII.  should the poet write the text to move beyond that recordation.

my poems were brought up as examples of little zen pieces that want to be just in the moment.  for a moment i was going to protest and say that my poems are more than that.

but are they?  and does poetry need to have any depth?  yes and no.  it depends on what the writer and the reader want out of a piece of poetry. i don't have any answers to the question.  i think poetry is as large as the universe and there is more than enough room for varied poetries.  such as my no depth zen and the interrogations of history poetics.

there were valid arguments for both sides of the question.  i want a poetics of everything.  that includes a poetry of brushing teeth, and a poetry of the lightest and the darkest parts of the human heart.  

not that i am an expert on these subjects.  but i left my friends a little amped up on finely crafted beer and good talk on poetics.  i say it was a good night.