Life-changing poets?

[Red-Headed]

Has there been a particular poet who has specifically changed the way you read poetry?

I found that after studying the poetry & theories of Gerard Manley Hopkins I started to look at all poetry differently. I was particularly intrigued by his concepts of ‘running’ & ‘sprung’ rhythm.

The main thing that impressed me was his interesting theories on scansion & stress. He believed that for the purpose of scanning, if you always take the stress first, in common English verse only two metrical feet are really possible. These would be the accentual trochee & the dactyl which can be mixed to become logaoedic rhythm. Unfortunately this can become repetitive so irregularities such as reversed variations on logaoedic rhythm can be employed as an equivalent of musical 'counterpoint'. If this reversal is repeated in two consecutive feet this can give the effect of ‘superinducing’ (to quote Hopkins) a new rhythm on the old. Hopkins believed that Milton was the great master of this, especially in the choruses of his Samson Agonistes. If counterpoint is used throughout it has an interesting effect in that only one of the forms appears to be heard as ‘sprung rhythm'.

Although Hopkins was virtually unknown in his lifetime his poetry & poetical theories are having a great impact even today. It has been said that in his way he has been as influential as Shakespeare or Dante. No doubt many would disagree, but I have found over the years that the poetry & theories of Gerard Manley Hopkins have had a huge effect on me & my reading of poetry.

[Dinkleberry2010]

For me, Dylan Thomas changed the way I viewed poetry. He showed to me that it was possible to express the deepest most moving and at the same time most profound thoughts and feelings without being mawkish or self-pitying or egocentric. To me, Thomas is one of the most personal as well as most objective poets

[Red-Headed]

For me, Dylan Thomas changed the way I viewed poetry. He showed to me that it was possible to express the deepest most moving and at the same time most profound thoughts and feelings without being mawkish or self-pitying or egocentric. To me, Thomas is one of the most personal as well as most objective poets

Plus he wrote the most famous villanelle in the English language (didn't write much in Gymreig though did he?).

[Dinkleberry2010]

Gymreig? Now there you lost me--that's over my head--is that a German word?

[Red-Headed]

Gymreig? Now there you lost me--that's over my head--is that a German word?

You know Thomas was Welsh right? I may have spelt Gymraeg/Gymreig oddly as it can have alternate spellings apparently. Although I lived in Wales for quite a few years I never really mastered the language. Plus the 'G' can be a 'C' sometimes depending on syntax, just to make it easier.

Adwaenoch a Cymraeg ydy dafodiaith , dde? (You know that Welsh is a language, right?)

Here's what it sounds like! I had to watch Pobol Y Cwm (People of the Valley) with subtitles!

[Dinkleberry2010]

oh, ok, I got you--so it's Welsh. That's true, he didn't write much if anything in Welsh. That voice though--my god. I once heard a recording of Thomas reciting some of his own work. I had a physical, emotional, mental, and some other thing that I can't identify reaction. My body was affected by it as well as my mind and my emotions.

[Red-Headed]

oh, ok, I got you--so it's Welsh. That's true, he didn't write much if anything in Welsh. That voice though--my god. I once heard a recording of Thomas reciting some of his own work. I had a physical, emotional, mental, and some other thing that I can't identify reaction. My body was affected by it as well as my mind and my emotions.

Yeah, couldn't quite hide his Swansea accent though could he? Richard Burton never quite lost his Neath accent either. I find most Welsh accents fairly easy to distinguish. Mercian & Midlands as well. I like to go to London sometimes, walk into a pub & order a pint of bitter in a Worcestershire dialect just to wind-up those south of the Watford Gap (I can speak in Black Country as well as my mother was from there!).

[wlz]

My favourite poet is T. S. Eliot. But I have not selected him as the poet who has
changed my life. The poet who changed my life was the first I gave any
lengthy consideration to at a time when I had no hobbies nor interests, no real recreational
ativities of any substance. Friends were working, school was over and church was boring!
Some of us can be very impressionable at seventeen years of age. I would say almost
fanatical, in fact. With two beady eyes peering out from a wiry haystack of untameable
hair, a perfectly executed dour and sour facial expression, a second-hand leather
jacket fading badly, a grinning 'Iron-Eddie' hanging out
over a pair of torn, well worn jeans, (pipe leg: black or blue in colour),
a thinly rolled cigarette limply dangling between two
dried-up pursed lips and, to complete the picture, two of the hairiest hands
ever seen on a youth weilding an out-of-tune six-string electric lump of wood
is an obvious example of this impressionability but fun fanaticism. This was a common sight in
the North of Ireland during the 90s regardless of the indie music scene!
For all the many attempts I made in those years, I could never quite fit the bill
because I had no musical talent. I did not worship Hendrix, Blackmore, Page nor Clapton
and every time I tried growing my hair long and squeezing myself into pipe legged jeans,
I ended up looking more like Willie Wonka rather than Robert Plant. My singing was brilliant,
if you happened to be a deer in the Pheonix Park in Dublin during the rutting season!
It first frustrated and then saddened me deeply that I could not be a part of this imaginary
rock scene. My friends continued with their strained efforts but I laid the ghost
to rest. I closed the lid, nailed it shut and buried it deep along with many other dreams of
a legendary and grandiose future for my ego.
At that time, armed with only a secondary level education in the subject with which
I was to become eventually obsessed by over the years, I took my lonely and unmusical self
to the local library. I had no idea what I wanted to read. No novelist in mind, no poet nor
playwright I wanted to know about. I scanned the covers of many books in the literature section
looking for something that might make an appeal, something that might jump out at me.
Though all seemed interesting, I JUST couldn't decide on what I wanted. I then resorted to the
most idiotic of tactics to help me choose a book from the vastly lined shelves: I asked myself,
"What title of a book or name of an author looked and sounded the most interesting to my mind?"
Eureka! I immediatedly spotted one. A penguin edition of collected works. It was poetry. The
poet was French. His name, ARTHUR RIMBAUD. It was all here, as I was soon to find out -
all the dreams that I had laid to rest with that ghost, crammed into one little book:
the unkempt look, the scruffy hair, the bodily dirt, sexual deviancy, alcohol, drugs,
pipe-smoking, the precarious and peripatetic lifestyle, prophecy and magic, heaven and hell,
love and war, life and death - the whole bloody lot in a history of one considerably bad boy but
good poet who had written great poetry - all of it staring out at me from the Henri Fantin-Lautor
painting on the cover.
There was music, but the music came in the form of words all magically organised together
in a perfect unit of beauty we call a poem. There was one boy weilding a pen in clinical isolation
rather than a band of egos all fighting for centre stage; there was the logical progression of
narrative rather than the tedious repetition of "Oooo baby" and "Oh Sugar"...
and then of course, there was the visions:

“The first study for the man who wants to be a poet is knowledge of himself, complete: he
searches for his soul, he inspects it, he puts it to the test, he learns it. As soon as he has learned
it, he must cultivate it! I say that one must be a seer, make oneself a seer. The poet becomes a seer
through a long, immense, and reasoned derangement of all the senses. All shapes of love suffering, madness.
He searches himself, he exhausts all poisons in himself, to keep only the quintessences. Ineffable
torture where he needs all his faith, all his superhuman strength, where he becomes among all men the
great patient, the great criminal, the great accursed one--and the supreme Scholar! For he reaches the
unknown! ....So the poet is actually a thief of Fire!”

RIMBAUD had shown me the power of the poet and the value of poetry. That it was more than just words
on a page. Rimbaud's philosophy of ideas in relation to poetry relayed through different formats
such as letters, journals, poems and prose poems, showed me the importance of the poem and what purpose
it serves for the poet.

Forgive me for the length of this text but I thought such a good question for a thread more than
deserves it. wlz.

[Red-Headed]

Excellent post wiz. I reckon it is a really good blog in the making. I have read some Rimbaud. Do you prefer to read him in French or a translation? I love a lot of Brecht's poetry & prefer to read them in German. Unfortunately my German is very bad so I have to study the translations first!

[Dinkleberry2010]

Quite a post, wiz; very good. One of the interesting things to me about Rimbaud is that he virtually suddenly stopped composing or writing before he was 20. I think he was 19 actually when he stopped writing poetry. It's almost as if he said: "Well, that's all I've got to say." One can debate whether it was Rimbaud or Whitman who actually started or created free verse; but I'll say this: Rimbaud, in my opinion, beats Whitman by a mile. For one thing Whitman was too long-winded and too self-centered and too "egotistical." Count the number of times Whitman uses the word "I" in Song Of Myself. Rimbaud is almost the complete opposite to Whtiman.

[wlz]

Oui, Je lis vraiment les poemes dans le Francais. But not without some difficulties as I am sure you can
imagine. After a time of reading Rimbaud I began collecting biographies on the poet and buying other editions
of his works that offered different translations. When I bought G. Robbs biography, 'RIMBAUD', I was in for a big surprise.
The all-knowing, confident, iron-willed poet with fantastic rhetoric and smacking good word play who was
writing poetry that seemed beyond his years became, all of a sudden, toned down in his style of writing
to a jilted and unimpressive composition with no talent at all for chosing the right words in the best order. On
further analysis of the biography I found a statement in Robb's work protesting that the overall
purpose of the book was to demystify the life of this grand poet. NOTHING COULD BE FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH! Populating
our ideas of Rimbaud's world, (or should I say worlds...?) with characters and correspondences to fill up some missing
links, the biographer gives us a colossal amount of unfounded information that seems to hold as fact throughout the book.
Conjectured facts that no one could ever really know. Robb degrades the very truths and elements that made the poet a great one.
In other words, I am saying that Robb ends in trying to demystify the poetry and not the poet. AND SUCCEEDS! the translations
are pathetic and earth-bound - "all too human". (Although, I believe, much like Robb, that such a poet can never really be
understood. Not the poet himself - not his mind, his life nor the MOTIVATIONS behind his plans. Anyone with the horrid
occupation of biography would surely turn to the poems!) But, "Put a pauper on horse back and he'll ride to hell."
A saying that applies to most biographers I think.
The biographer destroyed the poetry: its potency - GONE; its fluid style - GONE;
the perfect wording - GONE; the magical word play - GONE! And the poet's voice...? Well it collapsed beneath the
biographer's weight of trying to demystify. Because all the abovementioned elements were no longer in place the
poetry was sapped of its creative juices and inevitably crumbled. The poet's genius suffocated.
I think Rimbaud would start a fire worse than the flames of hell over it! A new thread should be started: brief
comparative studies on the best translations!
Sometimes I imagine that it might be easier to read Finnegans Wake in Gaelic rather than Rimbaud in poor French
translations. Well at least there would be a better point to it in the final analysis. -For me anyway!

[wlz]

"For I is someone else".

[Red-Headed]

Sometimes I imagine that it might be easier to read Finnegans Wake in Gaelic

Now, there's a challenge!

[stlukesguild]

One can debate whether it was Rimbaud or Whitman who actually started or created free verse; but I'll say this: Rimbaud, in my opinion, beats Whitman by a mile.



Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass dates from 1855. Arthur Rimbaud was born 20 October 1854. As much of a prodigy as he was, I'll take a chance and suggest that his efforts in free verse and prose poetry do not precede Whitman's. To this I'll also add that as much as I love the poetry of Rimbaud, in no way would I imagine him as being a greater poet than Whitman. Baudelaire... certainly a greater poet than Rimbaud and a more likely counterpart to Whitman... it might also be noted wrote his Petits Poèmes en prose (sometimes entitled Le spleen de Paris) at some period from the 1850s and before his stroke in 1866, although not published until 1869 after his death. These works certainly precede Rimbaud's own experiments in free verse or prose poems (which date from 1873-Une Saison en Enfer and 1874- Illuminations). Ill take Baudelaire... and Mallarme over Rimbaud any day... and surely they both had the far greater impact upon subsequent French poetry.

Of course I may just be biased (although I doubt it), considering that Baudelaire is unquestionably the poet who first truly seduced me... and drew be into the sensual delights of poetry. It was through Baudelaire that I came to Verlaine, Rimbaud, Mallarme, Nerval, and the whole of French Symbolism... an entire poetic world completely unknown to me... never introduced by teachers during my studies of World Lit. And from that point I was lost to the whole of poetry... and especially poetry from non-English speaking sources... poetry that I had not been required to read.

[Red-Headed]

Free Verse? What about Christopher Smart?