So I'm Really Stupid About Poetry

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I have to disagree MM, poetry need not be sentimental and relate on an emotional level.

Not for all, just for me. A poem can have all the technical prowess in the world, but if its content doesn't reach me on some emotional level, all the technicality and word-play won't be enough to make me enjoy it. Will I appreciate it? Of course.

[JBI]

I can understand where you're coming from JBI, but I'm inclined to agree with May and Stlukes. It is not that a poem should be without emotion, but evoking an emotional response is simply not a sufficient metric of poetic worth on its own.

I'm even willing to defend a small selection of Plath poetry (mostly from the Ariel collection, I'm of the opinion that Plath gets **** on far too much because she is inordinately popular for her level of talent) that are fairly good poems, even though they are often sentimental. So, I will not disagree that an emotional impact can be an important part of a poem's artistic value.

I would not have dreamt of arguing that raw emotion is justification of itself - I am far more critical of Beats and Confessional poets than most people, probably including you - my push though was toward your post -what does it mean to be without emotion? You were suggesting Donne could achieve something without appealing to emotions, or feeding much pathos into his poems, my question is, how far can that go while retaining a quality of good - ultimately, that poem is a technical success, but leaves much wanted.

I would argue much of it has to do with the fact that some form or another of "romanticism" has always been around, whereas some form of rhetorical genius has also been around, functioning simultaneously - ultimately though, rhetorical genius is stemming from prose more than verse, but uses verse as a vehicle for new rhetorical tropes and schemes (Horace, Donne, Jonson, etc.)

I am just weary of the extent to which that can stretch. Donne ultimately has no visionary scope (he lacks any real appeal to sensual representations, nor does he incorporate any images except for ironic effect). He also lacks a sort of pathos that engages readers (Jesus Christ saving the day only goes so far). He does best generally when he is not trying to, but delights a classroom because of his wit. To what extent though can his visions resound if not for their peculiar ridiculousness (flooding the world with tears, or floating airs, or any other nonsense, mandrake roots and falling stars included).

I would wager 9 out of 10 readers, that is, serious readers, with experience reading poetry, would take a side over Donne in favor of less technical poets, not because of his difficulty, but because his games seem to be all that is contained n the poems, with very little outside of it.

Now I am not ripping on Donne, but it begs a question of how far one can stretch things without breaking through with a little poetic imaginativeness (to distinguish from rhetorical genius, which Donne clearly has). The idea of conceited verse is problematic to me, as it seems to be all show and no substance - I do not need to cry reading poems, but at the same time, I expect a little artistic splendor beyond the playing with argument and words.

Some people I guess like it, the same way some people like Larkin or Pope, but ultimately I wonder how far that can stretch. IT isn't about how complex it is, but rather to me, how the complexity actually gets incorporated. Donne uses it for its own sake, which, though interesting, leaves to me a lot to be desired most of the time.

Arguably, I would say though that his best poems are his Elegies, which I rarely ever hear mentioned, despite their more interesting games.

[Petrarch's Love]

The critical reception of Donne is such an interesting phenomenon. He seems to split people right down the middle, and he gets described in such contradictory ways. I, for example, would never think to describe Donne as a poet whose appeal exists solely on the level of form, trickery and rhetorical wit as JBI seems to be suggesting. These are all clearly key features of Donne's poetry, but I find Donne an intensely emotional poet. Indeed, for those who favor Donne's poetry, the excitement and the moving qualities of his verse lie in the precarious tension between the control of the wit and the rhetoric and a sense of nearly uncontrollable passion...the fire by which, as Coleridge wrote, Donne is able to "Wreathe iron pokers into true-love knots." I would much more easily agree with an assessment such as JBI puts forward with regard to Jonson than I would with regard to Donne, who I find has much more intensity and depth below the surface of the metaphysical play.

But great minds before us have disagreed about this. Coleridge, T.S. Eliot, Cleanth Brooks read Donne as a passionate and vital poet whose rational rhetoric entwines perfectly with emotional expression, while C.S. Lewis would have sided with JBI in calling Donne the worst kind of bore, and I believe Fish is the one who took things a step further and dubbed his verse bulimic. Many poets have their critics and their detractors, but usually they are praising or condemning qualities they all more or less agree on. (People love Spenser's allegory or they aren't allegorical fans. They adore Shakespeare's wordplay or they get sick of the puns.) But there's a funny kind of divide with regard to Donne, with some seeing him as unbearably dry and passionless and others quite the opposite.

Incidentally, I've noticed that women in particular tend to find his verse especially sensual and seductive. Not that anyone has any illusions about the underlying misogyny and the fact that he would be a lousy boyfriend, but I have a friend who is fond of saying she would go to bed with Donne in a minute (I personally am not quite that big a Donne fan), and he was universally voted as the bad boy poet most likely to succeed at a recent knitting session populated by about 20 female literary critics. Maybe the problem is that JBI just wasn't the audience he was aiming for.

[shortstoryfan]

So, umm, about that Louise Glück....

[JBI]

The critical reception of Donne is such an interesting phenomenon. He seems to split people right down the middle, and he gets described in such contradictory ways. I, for example, would never think to describe Donne as a poet whose appeal exists solely on the level of form, trickery and rhetorical wit as JBI seems to be suggesting. These are all clearly key features of Donne's poetry, but I find Donne an intensely emotional poet. Indeed, for those who favor Donne's poetry, the excitement and the moving qualities of his verse lie in the precarious tension between the control of the wit and the rhetoric and a sense of nearly uncontrollable passion...the fire by which, as Coleridge wrote, Donne is able to "Wreathe iron pokers into true-love knots." I would much more easily agree with an assessment such as JBI puts forward with regard to Jonson than I would with regard to Donne, who I find has much more intensity and depth below the surface of the metaphysical play.

But great minds before us have disagreed about this. Coleridge, T.S. Eliot, Cleanth Brooks read Donne as a passionate and vital poet whose rational rhetoric entwines perfectly with emotional expression, while C.S. Lewis would have sided with JBI in calling Donne the worst kind of bore, and I believe Fish is the one who took things a step further and dubbed his verse bulimic. Many poets have their critics and their detractors, but usually they are praising or condemning qualities they all more or less agree on. (People love Spenser's allegory or they aren't allegorical fans. They adore Shakespeare's wordplay or they get sick of the puns.) But there's a funny kind of divide with regard to Donne, with some seeing him as unbearably dry and passionless and others quite the opposite.

Incidentally, I've noticed that women in particular tend to find his verse especially sensual and seductive. Not that anyone has any illusions about the underlying misogyny and the fact that he would be a lousy boyfriend, but I have a friend who is fond of saying she would go to bed with Donne in a minute (I personally am not quite that big a Donne fan), and he was universally voted as the bad boy poet most likely to succeed at a recent knitting session populated by about 20 female literary critics. Maybe the problem is that JBI just wasn't the audience he was aiming for.

Well, I doubt he was writing for women either - my understanding was the bulk of his poems moved in manuscript amongst his male associates.

[MorpheusSandman]

Donne to me seems to much of a show man, and not enough of an artist.

Same thing has been said of Fellini, and I frankly dismissed that criticism of him the first time I read it as well.

I do not see him ever of even coming close to achieving a close connection with a reader the way Virgil can, or Shakespeare can, for the simple fact that he is more preoccupied with rhetoric than anything else to my ear... The question of sincerity is not what I am getting at, most good poets tend to appear sincere when they aren't, but the idea of expressing something that engages the reader on a closer level, that leaves one saying "he or she expressed what I felt, or the world comes alive in these colours." something like that is more enjoyable than a good wit to my ear, the same way I do not think anyone really reads Ben Jonson anymore the way he used to be.

Perhaps YOU do not see him ever coming close to that kind of connection, JBI, but how do you ignore the fact that he has connected with many readers like that? Do you think all of his fans both classic and modern simply looked at his work as witty, rhetorical puzzles with nothing in them that spoke to them on a deeper level? You speak of reading Donne and finding something lacking, yet ever since reading Donne I've sadly found something lacking in most other poetry; what Donne accomplished I haven't seen accomplished anywhere else. No poet embodied the sensuousness of thought like Donne, the excitement of discovering what the mind could do. Yet it seems that kind of sensuous approach to intellectualism is alien to so many, perhaps yourself included, which is why you see Donne is just a wit concerned with rhetoric and puzzles, while I see him as an artist who filtered the wonders of life through the wonders of thought. That element of "him expressing what I've felt" comes through for me in Donne, and I'm not even concerned with religion or sexuality remotely to the extent Donne was. Yet, it's not even that element I connect to, but rather the vitality with which Donne expresses and explores his themes through though. I identify in Donne something closer to the way I see, feel, experience my own mind working. With most artists the identification comes from saying "this is what I feel" or "this is what I think", while with Donne identification comes from saying "this is what I feel when I think".

[MorpheusSandman]

The critical reception of Donne is such an interesting phenomenon... I find Donne an intensely emotional poet. Indeed, for those who favor Donne's poetry, the excitement and the moving qualities of his verse lie in the precarious tension between the control of the wit and the rhetoric and a sense of nearly uncontrollable passion...the fire by which, as Coleridge wrote, Donne is able to "Wreathe iron pokers into true-love knots."

Indeed, and an excellent post overall, Petrarch's Love.

Incidentally, I've noticed that women in particular tend to find his verse especially sensual and seductive.

One of the best essays in the Cambridge Companion to Donne was the final one by A.S. Byatt entitled Feeling thought: Donne and the Embodied Mind and she says as much that Donne had seduced her, but more in how he thought than what exactly he expressed. I found it rather surprising that almost all of the best essays in that book were written by women. Those written by men seemed rather dry and concerned with facts rather than interpretation or criticism, while those by the women were quite engaging, thoughtful, and frequently insightful.

[JBI]

Indeed, and an excellent post overall, Petrarch's Love.

One of the best essays in the Cambridge Companion to Donne was the final one by A.S. Byatt entitled Feeling thought: Donne and the Embodied Mind and she says as much that Donne had seduced her, but more in how he thought than what exactly he expressed. I found it rather surprising that almost all of the best essays in that book were written by women. Those written by men seemed rather dry and concerned with facts rather than interpretation or criticism, while those by the women were quite engaging, thoughtful, and frequently insightful.

Well, I'll reply to this post, as it is more interesting.

If you look at the history of poetics, Donne has rarely been considered a big player, and in truth, with the exception of some reactions, he only really seems, from what I understand, to have achieved the status he has no in the 20th century thanks to the help of readings by T. S. Eliot amongst others. Eliot would see himself the follower of Donne and Marvell, but in actuality, he owed a lot more to Wordsworth, something which he tried to disguise (just read Four Quartets - that's romantic poetry, the only thing that comes close to a similar game is select lines in Prufrock).

But you forget the other side of Petrarch's post - there is a camp of detractors, and arguably, it is a pretty big camp.

I would think the phenomenon of appeal to women has something to do with a mix between post-Depression and post-second wave feminist acceptance of his misogyny as somehow appealing, the same way women wear pants that say juicy on the bum - it's a sort of scholars desire to an extent to be objectified, or Canonized if you will. The sort of daring audacity, of rude offensiveness is attractive to an extent, the same way Marlon Brando in A Street Car Named Desire is attractive.

His audacity is charming, his nastiness, seduction.

[Paulclem]

Given the gentlemanly tradition of wit and wordplay, I think Donne does a good job of embodying passion and emotion into his works such as The Sun Rising and a Nocturnal Upon St Lucy's day. It could also be argued that his more hyperbolic conceits are an attempt to express those feelings within the poems.

It is interesting that he seems to connect with women critics/ readers from what you've posted.

I've always thought this portrait loked like Phil Lynott.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/5021774.stm

[MorpheusSandman]

@JBI: I find very little to disagree with in your last post. Considering I've been studying Donne rather intensively over the last six months I am aware of his volatile reputation and the fact that it only skyrocketed in the 20th Century. Yet I think it's less known that Donne's reputation was growing even before Eliot. The essay Donne's Afterlife in the Cambridge Companion covered this issue well, essentially tracing Donne's reputation. For a truncated version version: Donne's initial reputation was as a preacher and writer of satires, where several of his immediate successors and contemporaries imitated him. After his initial poetic influence faded, Donne was mostly remembered for his interesting biography in which he sacrificed everything for his love of Anne Moore, and that element, along with Grosart's focusing on Donne's Catholic apostasy, helped establish Donne the Man before Donne the Poet. What really surprised me was the fact that in the late 19th Century Donne's reputation was growing heavily in America: Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller, Longfellow, and Lowell were some of the names involved, and it was Lowell's literary executor Charles Norton who brought attention to the textual/manuscript problems in Donne, which is what lead Grierson to so scrupulously research his volume, which is part of the volume that Eliot was later commissioned to review. I rather think Eliot was the culmination of something that started before him, and I do think Eliot was a bit disingenuous in his praise, perhaps less passionate about Donne than he was for finding a way to allow his own poetry to be appreciated.

I would never deny that Donne has his detractors, but I rather think that's one of the more fascinating aspects about him. Is any other "canonized" poet so controversial and polarizing? Say what you like about Donne, but he's not a poet that many remain indifferent too, and the same qualities some despise are the qualities others latch onto and praise highly.

As for why so many women (perhaps we should say "female critics", because I don't think Donne would appeal to many more common female readers) are attracted to Donne, you may be correct, but I'd hesitate to advance such a reductive theory. What you mention certainly wasn't the focus of any of the essays in the Cambridge Companion written by women... I actually think it may have more to do with Donne's paradoxical qualities, the fact that he seemed to, at one time or another, write from every single perspective concerning women and love. It's hard to know how much of Donne's own life could be read into them, but one wonders if Donne's attitude towards women didn't fluctuate with the current state of his relationships. I think women are, in general, more open to that kind of inconsistency, more in tune with the idea that how they feel/think on a subject is itself subject to their feeling and thought in the moment. I think the only way to synthesize Donnean thought is rather to see it in this manner, that Donne is rarely after universal/general truths but is instead after expressions of the moment, and how that moment would feed into a universal generality if, indeed, it were truth. If you're going to believe and take to heart all of the nasty things Donne says about women, you also have to believe the good things, and they're frequently incompatible.

BTW, just to relate back to the OP, what do you think of Louise Gluck? I was reading some more of her work yesterday and I'm also still a bit baffled as to why she's considered great. Perhaps it would make more sense if I sat down with one of her complete poetry books. Sometimes poets just need to be read in sequences rather than snatches.

[Petrarch's Love]

Well, I doubt he was writing for women either - my understanding was the bulk of his poems moved in manuscript amongst his male associates.

You're right that his poems were mostly circulated as manuscripts or in epistolary form--as was true of the majority of poetry at this time--but wrong in assuming that his readership was exclusively male. There were probably more men than women reading his verse, but there is good evidence that many of these manuscripts would very likely have ended up being read by women as well, and we know for absolute certainty that some of his key patrons and the recipients of many, if not most, of his extant verse letters were highly educated and powerful women, most notably Magdalen Herbert, Lucy, Countess of Bedford, the Countess of Salisbury, and the Countess of Huntingdon. His letters to these women are full of expressions of respect for their learning and interest in their opinion that goes beyond the formulaic praise requisite for an address to a patron. His letters to Magdalen Herbert, especially, indicate that he had feelings of real warmth, friendship and gratitude toward her, and he describes her in one letter as she "to whom we owe all the good opinion that those we most need have of us."

I would think the phenomenon of appeal to women has something to do with a mix between post-Depression and post-second wave feminist acceptance of his misogyny as somehow appealing, the same way women wear pants that say juicy on the bum - it's a sort of scholars desire to an extent to be objectified, or Canonized if you will. The sort of daring audacity, of rude offensiveness is attractive to an extent, the same way Marlon Brando in A Street Car Named Desire is attractive.

Nope. I think you're off on this one, for a number of reasons:

1) This is not a post WWII phenomenon. I can think of a number of early female critics who were great Donne fans, in particular Virginia Woolf, who admired the immediacy of his verse, which she described as "the explosion with which he bursts into speech" (Woolf, "Donne After Three Centuries, in The Second Common Reader) and, if I'm remembering right (can't seem to track down the exact quote), wrote something along the lines of it being impossible for a woman to read Donne without falling in love with him.

2) You can't first claim that Donne is an emotionless writer whose appeal lies solely on the level of intellectual rhetorical games and then claim that his appeal lies in his resemblance to the character of Stanley Kozlowski.

3) There are enormous numbers of poets who wrote misogynist verse out there and who do a much better job of objectifying women than Donne. If the whole appeal was some ironic desire to be objectified, women could take their pick of pretty much anyone pre-1950 (and quite a few right up to the present day). This doesn't really explain why Donne in particular would resonate with women.

4) I've gathered that over the past few years you've done a fair amount of reading and thinking regarding feminist theory and criticism, which I naturally think is an excellent thing. However, be careful not to let theoretical categories tempt you into loosing a more nuanced view. As another poster suggested, the above statement is highly reductionist. It also is in danger of sounding as though you are stereotyping a whole swath of intellectual women who enjoy a particular poet's work as people who have some sort of secret desire to be objectified and wear the word juicy on their bums--a form of apparel I have never seen sported by a female scholar, and an assessment of the female id that Freud himself might find heavy handed. I don't believe that's what you meant, but that's why you need to be careful when making generalizations about "second wave feminism."

5) I do see what you're driving at. More than one critic has described Donne as a robust and highly "masculine" poet and one who, to quote Woolf again, "In [his] power of surprising and subjugating the reader...excels most poets." I think, however, that it's important to question whether the power with which Donne strikes his reader is intended to actually fully subjugate, dominate and knock the reader flat into submission or if it is an invitation to the reader to become engaged in the poetry and the argument and sharpen his or her wit against it in order to form a come back just as strong . My own sense of Donne is of someone throwing out clever things in order to get the reader's mind going, not shut it down, and, in the case of the love poems, with an interest getting some clever and witty flirtation going. Less Stanley and Stella in Streetcar. More Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado.

As for my own take on Donne's appeal to women, one scholar opens a piece on this subject by quoting Dryden's criticism of Donne in the same passage in which the term "metaphysical" was first applied to this poetry:

...he affects the metaphysics, not only in his satires but in his amorous verses, where nature only should reign; and perplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy, when he should engage their hearts, and entertain them with the softnesses of love.

Ironically, the criticism of Dryden as a contemporary was in part that Donne wasn't misogynistic enough and would confuse the poor female brain. I would tend to guess that it is this very quality in Donne's work--the assumption on his part that the women he addresses, whether the quasi-fictional objects of his love in his early works, or the patronesses of many of his later works--are perfectly reasonable and intelligent beings capable of following his clever conceits, that has long attracted women to his poetry. I also wonder about the degree to which, in his love poetry, he notably does not objectify women in the most common ways that many poets of the period do--for example, through long blazons about her "ruby lips" and "lily paps."

This is not, of course to say that the young Donne wasn't quite the womanizer or that throughout his career he wasn't perfectly comfortable with, a part of, and in some instances a vocal advocate of, the misogynistic conventions of his time, but he did fairly frequently, for a man of his time, see fit not to talk down to women as creatures merely worthy to be entertained "with the softnesses of love."

[Petrarch's Love]

So, umm, about that Louise Glück....

Hi shortstoryfan--Welcome to litnet, land of the many tangential (but fascinating) conversations. Sorry if we seem to be ignoring your topic, but I don't think the regulars around here have had a good excuse to debate the qualities of Donne before, and this is just too good an opportunity to pass up.

In terms of your original post, I'm fairly well read when it comes to poetry (I teach the subject at the college level) but not familiar enough with Louise Gluck's work, or impressed enough with what little I've looked at in the link provided from this thread (which I found fairly uninteresting at first read) to be able to give you any especially good insights into the appeal of her work. However, if your question is really about how free verse can be technical, then I think some of the poems that JBI posted in the 9th post on this thread could be a good place to start thinking about simplicity in poetry and the way things unsaid or, said in a less rhetorically spectacular way can create an effect of deep emotion. Haiku can be a wonderful place to start with this. I just came across this one by Kyoshi Takahama today for the first time and, well, have been waiting for a chance to share it with someone:

A dead chrysanthemum
and yet - isn't there still something
remaining in it?

However, the more important thing to address in both the title of this thread and your post is the notion that you are "stupid" at poetry. Stop branding yourself in that way immediately. I say this, not simply for the sake of your self esteem, but because the way to approach poetry is emphatically not in terms of being anxious about it. What it sounds like you need is to simply immerse yourself in more poetry. Read a wide range of things, and read a lot of poetry from the past as well as the present. That way you'll know the conventions, the ideas, the sounds that modern poets are drawing from and playing with.

Above all, approach poems in the spirit of an explorer. Read the lines more than once. Think about the poem as an open place, a place of play between words and phrases. When you don't understand something or don't get the way it's working, read and re-read, and try to think of multiple possible meanings, multiple ways a word or line could be understood. If you're reading a poet from the past, or who is sufficiently famous, get an edition with good introductory material, annotations or other helpful material to help get you into the poem. A poem will almost always provide a challenge to the reader and will always provide some level of ambiguity and uncertainty that you are being invited to untangle. Practice reading lots of poetry and different kinds of poetry will help you get better at untangling poetry, which will in turn help you better assess what you think of poetry in the way you want to. More important than being able to give an intelligent assessment of a poem, however, is being able to derive insight and enjoyment from the poem. Regardless of what critics say, if you are able to experience being moved by a poem, or to think of things in a new way after reading it, or to be entertained and delighted by it, then you have succeeded.

[MorpheusSandman]

I would tend to guess that it is this very quality in Donne's work--the assumption on his part that the women he addresses, whether the quasi-fictional objects of his love in his early works, or the patronesses of many of his later works--are perfectly reasonable and intelligent beings capable of following his clever conceits, that has long attracted women to his poetry.

I also think this is a strong possibility, and it was one advanced by another critic who talked about Donne's intellectual relationship with Anne Moore, with whom he revealed in a letter the joys of sharing his life with someone he felt was his equal (of course, he said it much more elegantly and discretely). One gets the sense that much of his work around that time could almost be his attempt at impressing her.

In terms of your original post, I'm fairly well read when it comes to poetry (I teach the subject at the college level) but not familiar enough with Louise Gluck's work, or impressed enough with what little I've looked at in the link provided from this thread (which I found fairly uninteresting at first read) to be able to give you any especially good insights into the appeal of her work.

Funny thing about Gluck... I'd remember hearing her name somewhere and when I was flipping through my books the other day I came across Penguin's 100 Greatest Poets of the English Language that had included her, along with Wendy Cope and Kay Ryan, as the three most recently born significant poets. IIRC, the poems selected in that Anthology were better than the ones I read of hers online.

[doowoop]

Following the link provided by Yes No, I read Louise Gluck's a couple of poems and they reminded me of the Russian writer, novelist Ivan Turgenev, who wrote a cycle of poems in prose. in poetry may bebefore all, to pay attention to feelings, emotions, and not on technique.