The Rueful Concession of Clement Gooding

To my great sorrow
And out of sincere contrition
I confess
That all poems
Like all people
Are good

I thought that my poems
Of all the poems
In the world
Were most thorough failures
And that I
The sublime sinner was

Hard work won’t do it
Vast learning impressive intelligence
Futile
Aim as low as you can go
Track that elusive error
Still it’s good

Get an image in there
Mr abstract
Control that uncontrollable
That appetite
That lust
That gravitation

Sneer
Sneak
Snag
Slither
Skulk
Still good

Noisy Dodge
Dangerous maneuver
At worst
Obnoxious dork
But really
Angel behind a mask

Wears the wastrel
A greasy garment
Dwells the deadbeat
In horrid homestead
But battens the beastly
On blessed breakfast

How pleasant
This tree-lined street
Albeit contaminated
With Windows 10 aesthetic
Black and white
And rectilinear

No red
Save stop sign
Regular octagon
Of corners clipped
The square
Sans serif

The whiff of skunk
Not unpleasant
If modulated
In concentration
By distance
By prevailing westerlies

A supper medley
A mixed bag
A congeries of objects
With transcendence material
With hope despair
With purity impurity

And suffering
Yes of course suffering
Some accidental
Some inflicted
Some sought and retrieved
Intrinsically bad

The toddler
Torments the cat
And bewails
The reactionary scratch
Neither party
Origin of itself

How arrogant
To imagine
In that I die
Myself must cause sorrow
Who am not cause of death
Nor origin of myself

No poem is bad
For nota
They are continuous
And proviso
Each overflows
With infinite depth

So too people
Pleasure
Joy
Kindness
Courage
Merriment in sociality

Witness the constellations
Zodiacal rodeo
Kiss and whip
Each others’ asses
Allegorical tableau
Masque of apothegm

Momently
Nebula
Supernova
Black hole
Matter and energy
The speckled and the dark

I too
Dynamic cosmos
And thou beloved
Lately estranged
Continuous
And of infinite depth

Scholastic colloquy
Budgetary negotiation
Discussion of statistics
In sport or election
Pitching woo
Consensus as to menu

There’s this cable
That keeps upright
A utility pole
Upon which guywire
Bluebird perches
Male blue and orange

In the nightblind
Green as gold
Seek the right kind
Shy or bold
Stay the tight bind
Quick or cold

No bad poem no bad people are
At bottom is not bad
For Bottom’s dream
Hath no bottom
And Ma Rainey’s black bottom
Shines

Even people and poems
Infected with
The ideological virus
Even the murkiest slop
The shamelessest bastardy
Teem with refulgence

All shines
With light
The electromagnetic
And the metaphorical
Nor can contain
Such ecstasy

2 responses to “The Rueful Concession of Clement Gooding”

  1. detectivenoisily9a7da201fb Avatar
    detectivenoisily9a7da201fb

    To me this poem is good. But, since all poems are good I have said nothing. It’s just stating a fact. But to dig a little deeper, this poem does beg me to read it again. So that proves that it is enticing to me. And I have read it about a dozen times now. I like the back and forth pull of delightful images and repulsive images. That’s the way life is!

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    1. Greg "DK" Kelley Avatar
      Greg “DK” Kelley

      Hi, DecNois!

      Backstage dramas have a certain charm, I suppose, but I am generally loath to publicize my desultory method of composition. I think I bounce around in a triangle formed by neoclassical “just representation of general life,” romantic “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” and modernist “language framed for the contemplation of the mind.” But none of these treat the true telos of artistic composition, which is an aesthetic object. I don’t say “object of beauty”–though beauty is certainly a primary characteristic–for the aesthetic also involves other qualities like the sublime, the tragic, etc.

      In my current musical production, I’m attempting a new (to me) modular form of song construction. (Brian Wilson described the production of “Good Vibrations” as “modular.”) “Animals Think,” on the page linked below, is a good example of my recent record production in this mode: https://dkpoems.com/rendered-into-song/
      I think this modular approach more or less consciously affected my composition of “Clement Gooding.” The stanza are each six lines, but they vary considerably in style.

      I’m preparing a course on the “Songs of Innocence and Experience” of William Blake. Blake rejected the Christian doctrine of original sin–he took the innocence of children seriously. As a value realist, I hold to be the case that every person is valuable and the value of each person–their dignity–is inherent, invariable, and inalienable. In this sense all persons are good–moral goodness is a property of personhood. So, as you say of poems, I say nothing (really) when I note the goodness of persons. We can’t judge the moral value of a person. However, we can judge the moral value of the things they say and the actions they undertake. BUT we must establish fact before we judge: what did they actually say or do?

      So it is with poems and other works of art. They all possess aesthetic value. However, so far as I can tell, aesthetic value is more complex than moral value. A person can, and indeed must be prepared to, give an account of their actions. That is, they can state whether they have responded to objective reasons or their action responds to some other motive. Reasons are objective but responses to reasons are subjective. And the subjectivity of another person is opaque to me except insofar as they express it. In contrast, an artwork is all surface–what you see is what you get. And that surface is a field of virtually infinite complexity. Hence, to appreciate a work of art, to experience its value, requires analysis of its virtually infinite components to establish the facts. That’s what we do when we dig deeper and read or view or listen to it a dozen times.

      While you’re at https://dkpoems.com/rendered-into-song/ , please check out “Empire (The Tyger”), a setting, with extra words by me, of the famous Blake poem.

      Sincerely,
      DK

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