Menu
 GotPoetry? Inside Community Forums Marketplace Reference Communication
User Info
Welcome Anonymous
 Membership:
 Latest: lostsoul104
 New Today: 0
 New Yesterday: 8
 Overall: 9338
People Online:
 Members: 5
 Visitors: 93
Bots: 4
 Staff: 0
Staff Online:No staff currently online.
Paid Membership
Buy a paid membership and get more out of GotPoetry!
Advertise on the GotPoetry Advertising Network.
Get Published
|
Poetry Is Doomed #2: Why Making Love to Someone's Mind is a Bad Idea
The film love jones can't slip out of the collective consciousness of today’s poets fast enough. If I hear someone use the line "make love to my mind" one more time I will hurl the heaviest Pablo Neruda tome I can find at the offending wordshit.
Understand, I have nothing against the movie. I enjoyed it just fine whenever someone wasn't doing a poem (a merciful 5 minutes total if you bothered to count the art form's presence at all). It's a more-than-serviceable love story and Nia Long has to try really, really hard to do wrong in my book (like Held Up hard). I can even trace my own entry into the spoken word scene to the effect of the cool imagery of this film's meager and fleeting band of bards upon my own as-yet unformed artistic voice. What black person, after seeing this film, didn't want to hang out in dark clubs, wear leather jackets and woo Nia Long-cool women by dressing their apparent lubricity in verse? What sister didn't want to have her thighs whispered to, or believe that by reading out of their journal they could net true, rain-soaked love in the end? How many Coltrane records did we buy that year, and how many poems did we write about his power?
To compound the ludicrousness of the matter, no such line actually ever appears in the three poems presented in the film. Despite this fact, you can likely trace its diarrhea-level use to the first open mic taking place the day after this film opened in 1997. We simply know that this is what is meant, and this is what we’re trying to capture. The universe of bad love poetry locked all of its orbits into a straight line through the heart of every hopeful impresario and now we’re stuck with this ridiculous sentiment.
"Make love to my mind."
My bile is, without fail, instigated to near-eruption by the heavy-handedness of this statement, despite the fact that there are worse and more common offenses in poetry. The blunt point of using this line by a poet, usually female, is to implore their fictive (or not) paramour (usually to-be) to not focus on their exterior beauty but to instead find her virtuous of personality and intellectually sexy...regardless as to whether or not there is anything in the poem or her presentation to suggest that this is indeed the case.
And while this sort of moral jackhammering to an audience is reprehensible enough, my greater beef with this line is its alarming frequency. It’s sort of frightening to watch a cliche being born in real time. It comes out of the womb of the group-mind a pleasing and informative thing; poignant even in some cases. Somewhere along the way it becomes popular, the captain of the football team that everyone wants to be seen with, or at least rumored to have slept with. Eventually it becomes too popular, like a good song played one too many times, or becomes the bottom of an enormous bucket of popcorn that we continue to nibble at but have lost the flavor for and can now feel the labor of chewing. Whatever power this phrase ever had, it has been lost in the sea of sameness that passes for contemporary love poetry. I heard someone use it in a poem the other night and I audibly guffawed in astonishment (fortunately, the band she was reading in front of drowned it, and much of her poem, out). I thought, "People are still USING that? I mean, in EARNEST?"
"Make love to my mind."
What does this mean, exactly? Should I begin my missives to the apple of my eye with "Dear Nia Long's Cranium..."? Should I buy for her head sexy hats and bandanas? Should I whisper into her ear all good and beautiful things until she is ready for intercourse and only then cease using my "inside voice"?
Of course, I know what this means, but I want to know what the person who deigns to use such a line wants me to see in my mind as a result. All I can come up with is the fairly gross image of...well, I'll spare you the thought. You can likely surmise, from the utter transparency of the line, where this could only lead.
To close: there is no way to make it fresh again, not for years to come, and so we must put this tired line to rest. We must care enough about our art and our voices to, if not be bothered to seek out new words for the same things, be wise enough to not use the same ones over and over.
Make love to MY mind and quit molesting me with this grossly-overused snatch of literary laziness.
Submitted by ScottWoods on Monday, August 21, 2006 (11:05:00) (2935 reads)
|
| "Features: Poetry Is Doomed #2: Why Making Love to Someone's Mind is a Bad Idea" | Login/Create an Account | 11 comments |
|
|
| The comments are owned by the poster. We aren't responsible for their content. |
 |
Re: Poetry Is Doomed #2: Why Making Love to Someone's Mind is a Bad Idea
(Score: 1 )
by rykmcintyre on Monday, August 21, 2006 (08:50:14) |
My girlfriend (who lives in Canada) used to say this all the time...
|
Re: Poetry Is Doomed #2: Why Making Love to Someone's Mind is a Bad Idea
by Anonymous on Monday, August 21, 2006 (12:19:27) |
THAT, my friend, is unfortunate.
- Scott
|
Re: Poetry Is Doomed #2: Why Making Love to Someone's Mind is a Bad Idea
by Anonymous on Monday, August 21, 2006 (17:32:59) |
favorite line from this read:
"it's frightening to watch a cliche being born in real time"
yes! i'm thinking make love to my mind either means f*ckmeinmy ear....or iwannagiveyouablowjob.
no mention of bleeding ink and the whole blood/ink metaphor? oh, and please write a poem about your pen and your words...please, i haven't heard enough.
 |
Re: Poetry Is Doomed #2: Why Making Love to Someone's Mind is a Bad Idea
(Score: 1 )
by ScottWoods on Monday, August 21, 2006 (18:03:36) |
BWahaahhaaa...
 |
Re: Poetry Is Doomed #2: Why Making Love to Someone's Mind is a Bad Idea
(Score: 1 )
by InonI on Friday, March 28, 2008 (10:54:38) |
you know, come to think of it, i heard the same line in a "thought of the day" last week. my exboyfriend's mom used it something like "we can make love to each other's minds and cherish our bodies"  . my eye twitched when i read it but all i said was "yea, i like that." I feel you what you're saying tho. it's like shooting an already dead squirrel nine times like fiddy cent! as for the overused catch phrase:  NEXT!!! 
|
Re: Poetry Is Doomed #2: Why Making Love to Someone's Mind is a Bad Idea
by Anonymous on Friday, June 19, 2009 (00:41:34) |
I like the phrase, tired or not, but I never uttered or wrote it. The times it actually happened I was too caught up in the experience to reflect on what was happeneing, which was a good thing.  I just would never utter it or want to hear it uttered because it sounds pretentious and demanding. But it does happen.
|
Related Links
Article Rating
Average Score: 4.8
Votes: 5
Spread the word
Options
Discussion
|
Previous: Poetry Is Doomed #1: Art Unto Like Commerce
Re: Zero Point Zero: Credo
You can syndicate other parts of our site using the following files:
