I recently found a card in my letter box inviting (nay, inciting!) me to join a simple living group. It sounded good, the website is www.simplicitycollective.com, but then the group itself is called (wait for it) "The Life Poets' Simplicity Collective: a poetic alternative to consumer culture".
Why do I have to be a Life Poet? Couldn't it have been Life Builder? Or Life Definer? Or even cut the flowery junk and just call it the Simplicity Collective? Eek.
It makes me think of dear old simplicity forefather Henry David Thoreau. Even the oft-quoted Walden is, I find, a bit flowery and poetic - well, Thoreau was a poet, too. Walden also illustrates for me the poetic - or shall we say impractical - side of simplicity and simple living.
1 comment:
Agreed, poetry is unnecessary. If none were written, nobody would die. And yet, and yet...
"...whenever he saw one of his young students being rude, in a fit of anger, or otherwise acting unworthily, he would gently lay his hand on the arm of the youth and say; "But this is not poetry! This is not poetry."
(from http://www.haikupoetshut.com/basho.html)
Is this, or something like it, what the Life Poets Simplicity Whatsit were alluding to?
I think Eastern poets have a better handle on their work than Western ones do (sweeping generalisation no.546). Hence my weakness for haiku - good wab sabi examples only, though.
By the way, thanks for the reciprocal link.
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