The Poetry of Economy

Poetry has always been very hard to pin-down, to define in universally-accepted terms. A poem may have meter, but it is not neccessary. It may rhyme, but then it may not. A poem may have form or be completely formless. It is as though poetry is mutually inclusive of nothing.

But for one thing. The one thing that poetry definitely possesses is an economy of language. With exception only to the Beats (who I don't think should be classed as poets, as such), all poetry harnesses its own essence with the fewest words possible.

I would go as far to say that economy isn't something included within poetry, it is synonymous with poetry.

And I would also suggest that our great privation is of economy, ergo poetic experience.

"Economy" I intend as an all-ecompassing term. I mean, the information and media that permeate our lives are unpoetic precisely because they have no economy, no restraint.

We live in an age where fame for fame's sake is a recognisable objective. People desperate for fame willingly sign up to publicise their hitherto private lives in the pseudo reality of the Big Brother house or some other misnomered "reality" TV show. What shows like Big Brother give us - rather than the opportunism of opening a public debate on some manifest fault, foible, friction or handicap - is an excess (rather than economy) of information.

The viewer is exposed to the vulgar minutiae of those terrified of their own anonymity. Television would be richer if only it were more economical - we do not need to witness the pointless banters and behaviours of a decagynia of cherry-picked oddballs rattling around in a fabricated house for an hour (or twenty four hours, if you have cable).

It is true to say that films were better in the black & white days because they had poetic economy. Sex was always implied, never shown, in the Golden Age of Hollywood and was all the more poetic and arresting for this economy.

Since the technicolour of the Sixties, sex on the screen has become progressively longer and increasingly embarrassing. The fact of its excess renders it unnecessary. That is not to be prudish, merely to point out that Double Indemnity in the 1940s was far better than its remake, Body Heat, in the 1980s.

True the original script and cinematography were better, but also in Double Indemnity neither did you have to sit through thirty minutes of "steamy" smooching before the plot even thought about slotting into second gear. "The lead characters are passionate about each other - we get it already!"

In many ways this lack of economy is an insult to the intelligence: Subtlety must be banished because they think we're too thick to "get it" when it's only implied.

At first I thought it was typical Labourite socialism on the part of Hazel Blears to denounce political blogging on the Internet. This isn't Russia, Blears. But, though I disagree with her, I can sympathise with her point: Anyone out there can open a blog (such as myself) and write a load of visceral, uninformed drivel (I'm setting up a very obvious put-down to anyone who hates me or my blog, here).

There is no restraint, no economy. There is mostly a needy vying for attention - Chris Crocker's impassioned defence of Britney Spears, for example. His inability to economise his emotional outpouring will mean - in spite of the fame he earned from his YouTube clip - will be his burden: The dignity he publicly sacrificed when he filmed himself bawling.

Allow me to leave you with this: At the train station near my workplace there was a fatality. A woman - it was reported to me - was pushed/fell onto the train-track.

As well as being killed, this woman's leg was severed.

The person who reported this news to me was himself at the train-station at the time of this horrific tragedy. By coincidence he had a good camera on him and because "never seen a severed leg before" decided to capture the loose limb as a high-resolution image. Not only content with satisfying his own curiosity, he proceeded to turn his camera 180 degrees to give me a glimpse of the macabre.

Again, this is an example of excess rather than economy. The severed leg is something we do not need to know. More than that, it is one final assault upon the deceased, first for their life to be taken and then for their privacy and dignity.

When we have poetic experience, we can make sense of life - and death. We console ourselves with our metaphorical position in the universe - ashes to ashes, dust to dust. But that is lost when we move from economy to excess, when we adopt a fascination with a limb detached from its owner. It is lost in the idiotic theatre of reality television when we witness live on-air Jade Goody being diagnosed with cervical cancer.

Above all what has been lost is this: The ability to ignore information which we do not need. With the excess of information out there - on the TV, on the Internet, in the newspapers - the onus is ours to select the information that truly benefits us and improves our life, health and intelligence.