Since I have been reading A LOT of Richard Jackson lately, I decided to do this week's commentary on one of his poems from the Unauthorized Autobiography. "Loose Lips Sink Ships," to me, is a reversal of the Ars Poetica. This poem, instead of the poet talking about the poem, is the poem talking about the writer and how he writes poems. It's slightly confusing, but extremely interesting because the poem meditates on how Jackson writes, which lays out the nuts and bolts on writing while laying out the Jackson style: prolix and moving from subject to subject quickly and jagged at moments.
The reason I like this poem so much is the backwards nature of it, much like Jackson's style: he does a lot of what we are "not supposed" to do in writing (ie: to be verbs, telling, moons, cliches). This backwards nature is Jackson turning the idea of an ars poetica on its head, much like he does cliches. Cliches are hard to turn and make "not cliche," but Jackson does this successfully in most cases. The ars poetica could be considered cliche to some people, but the nature of this poem is not cliche in the least, and that is why I like this poem so much: it's a novel idea that I admire greatly.
The poem can be found here.
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