Toe in the Water

Nonsense Poetry

Nonsense Poetry

A song that I’m currently obsessed with is One Headlight by The Wallflowers. It’s a very moody, and intense song but is limited in its stamina because it’s short on meaning. The lyrics start out well enough but quickly degenerate into a word salad. This is fine if the music is strong enough (which it is) but there’s a limit to how much meaninglessness we can stand. The human mind cries out for meaning and will insert it even into places where there is clearly no intent at all (a randomly patterned wall for instance).

So any painting by Vermeer becomes more valuable and important than a Mondrian. Like it or not, meaning is essential to art and it’s not art if it’s merely pretty - it’s design.

And yet I freely admit that, on occasion, I write nonsense poetry. Most frequently this happens when I’m confronted by a prompt that I cannot get inspiration from. In such cases, especially when I’m really desperate, I resort to nonsense. Heck, if Lewis Carroll can do it, so can I.

My excuse is that you don’t have to take it seriously. Not all poetry has weight and is intended to last forever. Such things help, it’s true, but life is a matter of comic relief along with drama. Shakespeare was the master of this combination.

All of which is a way of saying that I may yet write something in reply to the prompt, “Leather,” but it will be nonsense. I really don’t have that much of a relationship to leather.

Since One Headlight was instrumental in providing me with this post, here it is. You can see how much of a story you can glean from the lyrics. Something about funerals, no doubt.

Word count: 291