Satire and Poems

Satire and Poems

"The Market Dictate" and a number of the poems that follow, fall somewhere between the social comment and political satire, or at least the attempt at such. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica or a take on it, satire is an artistic form in which human or individual vice is held to account by some means, sometimes with an intent on improvement. Some people might remember from their schooldays the satires of Aonghus O Dálaigh or Jonathan Swift. The idea that poetry makes nothing happen was lost on the bards.

Poetry does not need anything to say, or anything of substance, but when language becomes more important than what is said, then it had better say something. The minute particulars can be particularly boring. Anyway one does not disqualify the other. Technical competence is an admirable quality but to elevate it above the material is to lend it something it may not have. On its own it is no measure of poetry or anything else. Nor is originality of thought. They are constructs.

Poetry is a medium. A means of bringing to consciousness in every sense. Of changing it. And the patterns within language have the most effect. FM

Photograph: Restored well at Tara.

January 2007.