Treatment

I composed this poem with its varied rhyme in response to the panic-stricken, harried nature of modern communications. These days, an event barely occurs before it is analyzed, reported everywhere and picked apart, to the finest, most excruciating detail.

The Fox News Settlement with Dominion this week shows one result of being in such a hurry to broadcast and share what we have only just learned. Or, as the case may be, what we have only just created, ourselves. Yet the pressure is on to do exactly that.

It makes me wonder how art, specifically the art of writing well, fares in such a pressure cooker. Is it any wonder that the result, though quick, is often dull and mundane, like boiled vegetables? Perhaps a little extra time and care, both on the part of the creator, and on the part of the recipient and appreciator of that creation, would be well-spent, as together, we try to nurture the arts, in a culture so entirely obsessed with speed.

There is no resting on the page.

There is no dipping of the pen

In deepest ink.

A kernel of a thought, and then

The keyboard captures what we think,

In this Computer Age.

No time spent, looking up a word.

No dictionary, pulled from shelves,

No torn Roget to wallow in,

Exploring nuance, synonym.

We keep our quandries to ourselves

And publish banal blurbs.

There’s no thick file for cooling off,

For set-asides that read too hot,

Embarrassing and personal.

We’re staging plays without rehearsal.

Give ’em, give ’em all we’ve got,

And damn the consequence! we scoff.

Such fine, foolhardy courage, this!

For which it is, we will not know,

Till we receive responses.

Each letter written–blow by blow–

Elicits echos–audience’s

Quick replies–Or emptiness.

A poem was never meant to stand

Upon a stage so nakedly,

Exposed to jeers and ripe tomatoes.

But poems, cradled in the hand,

In some cool, dappled grove, and staked,

And tended to most ardently,

Will blossom in one’s heart a lovely rose.

Copyright 2023 Andrea LeDew

For another poem contrasting new and old, read The New. For a tongue-in-cheek poem about kids in college, read Eighteen.