A New Athenian Poem

Individualism is a mature and calm feeling, which disposes each member of the community to sever himself from the mass of his fellows and to draw apart with his family and his friends, so that after he has thus formed a little circle of his own, he willingly leaves society at large to itself. Selfishness originates in blind instinct; individualism proceeds from erroneous judgment more than from depraved feelings; it originates as much in deficiencies of mind as in perversity of heart.
Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America

“There is poetry in how we speak to each other. Not only in the words we use but also in how our conversations play out. I am writing poetry every time I open my mouth to speak to you. Right now, I am writing poetry, and soon, you will write me back.”
“If there is still poetry in human interaction, I can't find it. I simply don't know where to look. I don't have a computer and I don't watch TV. I don't have a PDA. I don't hear people talking anymore except into keyboards and microphones. Everyone I know is mute.”
“Absolutely.”
“And doesn't that depress you?”
“A little, but this is our reality. We can't just go on complaining like this, like children over spilled carrot juice.”
“But we talk in snippets about nothing. We text message our feelings. We have no feelings because we lose them all on the Internet. We are fragments of fragments. We are invisible.”
“So? We're fragments. We're invisible. We can go anywhere we want, then. We should be the superheroes that put the pieces back together. Our task should be to save modern communication, not to fret over how much television we watch in emails to each other.”
“So where do we start? Show me how to save something that's already gone.”
First off, to hell with quotations. We don't need to know who's talking when.
Two voices, not two people.
Not necessarily two people, no. Just a conversation. Me and you, that's all.
But who are we; Philosopher Kings? Lovers?
That's not for the poet or me or you to say. The conversation tells us all we need to know.
And what should we talk about?
Whatever is important; death, dying, heartache, poverty. It doesn't matter.
I choose dying.
Good. Say we're to talk about dying. Our job would be to create a composition through our conversation about dying.
Our conversation would be a poem.
About dying and whatever else comes up?
Our own little way of saying that we're fed up with the withdrawal of the postmodern man from everything and everyone.
Because if we write poems about talking, then we become better at talking to each other.
We need this desperately, don't we?
I believe so. And we need this form of poetry to show us how to get it. Our form recognizes nothing besides the importance of dialogue. The poem is what was said.
It's a very social project.
And imaginatively voyeuristic! It requires the poet to manipulate different voices in order to create a conversation that is both real and meaningful.
But what about metaphor and allegory? What about the abstract? Craft? Rhyme and meter? Those elements of the art that have given poetry life for hundreds of years? Aren't we ignoring the past? all those time-honored and traditional means by which humankind has rendered the human song beautiful?
Traditional beauty is a response to the demands of time and place. Beauty is whatever we long. Beauty is both conventional and unconventional. Our aesthetic is conversation and personal connections; these are what we want to restore. Besides, nothing can stop us from talking in metaphor to each other. Remember, our conversations should mirror how we want to talk to each other; no one said we have to reflect how we talk to each other. In fact, this is exactly what we want to move away from. Auerbach's Mimesis does not apply here -- only the beauty that our age demands.