Jim Murdoch investigates some intriguing minimalist avenues in poetry. Check it out.
I love very short poems, but in a way I don’t think minimalism is the engine that drives my car. I just have a short attention span!
I like poems to say a lot in a short space, which I consider is a different aesthetic than wanting a poem to be minimal. Density instead of expansiveness. Not something you can read so much into. Not something you can make what you will. Hmm.
Thank you for the plug, Julie, and for the comment on my site. I’m like you. I like shorter forms of poetry but I also like a bit of meat on the bones. The kind of poems we get into in the second part of the article just take it one step too far as far as I’m concerned. That said, these have been incredibly popular posts – my stats have gone through the roof – so someone out there is keenly interested in micropoetry.
I am with you entirely on the density
thing, but think that micro poems such as Haiku are doing something different, something which the western mind is excluded from. Almost I grasp it,but then when I look it is not there.
(I have only just found your site, but will be back. Excellent!)