Language poetry

http://www.creative-writing-now.com/language-poetry.html

“Creative Writing Now: In the same essay, you refer to the value of the irrational in poetry, when used correctly — when it is “the right kind of crazy.” Could you talk more about this? Could you talk about the role of play, wordplay,humour, serendipity in your poetry?

Karl Elder: So that following a mid-day trip my wife and I do not have a crabby grandchild on our hands, in order to keep him, a three-year-old, awake in his car seat, I sing his favorite songs, but with a twist: Old MacDonald had a farm—G.I., G.I. Joe. “NOOOO,” he guffaws and then giggles, meaning, of course, “That’s irrational.” Children seem to know intuitively that whacky language is not crazy so much as it is craziness, and should they happen to grow into contemplative adults, craziness may become, for instance, something as serious and challenging as the irrationality of The Book of Job, subject the poem is to interpretation that the divine is revealed only in questions for which there are no answers. Another thought—paradox is a form of irrationality; nevertheless, we “understand” it. And once upon a long time, it was irrational to speak of the earth as round. Yet how prompt our conversion. Human evolution has well outfitted the brain for sea change in an ocean of eons”