UBC ASTU 100 Assignment: My Personal Thoughts About Conceptual Poetry

I have felt confused by conceptual poetry I have read, and even felt uncomfortable at times. The framing of procedural poetry or conceptual poetry as a form of self expression baffles me because the works are created by borrowing the words of others.

Although an author of a conceptual poem does not write anything in their poem it is considered their original work. The method in which the concepts or ideas are displayed depend heavily on the source materials an author chooses and the rules they set to rearrange the source materials. Techniques often used in conceptual poetry include sampling, literary constraints and appropriation of source materials. The idea or concept behind the poem seems to matter much more than the words or information within the poem. The sampling and appropriation of source materials could cause readers to read a poem without understanding the context and intent under which the words were written. It also seems disrespectful to the authors of source materials to have the work used without permission or acknowledgement. The process of coming up with an idea or concept is the focus of the form while the source texts and words within the poem are secondary.

The premise of conceptual poetry makes me wonder about the degree of originality and authenticity within this genre’s works as its methodology seems so mechanical and uncreative. The planning and rule making to produce a concept appears to be the most important part of a conceptual poem’s creation. The actual writing of the poem is almost mechanical as the rules set out to give the author the means to rearrange the source materials into the final product. I find the conceptual poems I have read to be puzzling because even understanding the concept behind the poems, parsing out the message behind the text of the poem proved to be challenging nonetheless.

From my perspective conceptual poetry is greatly limited by the rules it must conform to. The use of sampling source works to create new poems limits the ways an author can convey their message. Borrowing the words of others causes inconsistency in tone and rhythm within the same poem.