which is better? a poem or a booK?

[MorpheusSandman]

All sincerity is serious; therefore, all truth is seriousness. This is obviously a case of semantics...

Yes, it's semantics. I took "serious" to mean "grave, somber, weighty or important" not "sincerity." That said, if you think Pope was sincere you obviously don't get the role of satire, irony, and sarcasm, which doesn't make its point by sincerity but rather by the intentional perception of insincerity. We're supposed to recognize that what's being depicted isn't to be taken at face value, that it isn't sincere, and that's the only way to extract any "moral" from it. Beyond this, as Auden eloquently laid out by way of Shakespeare, the truest poetry is the most feigning, essentially meaning that there's a gap between actual truth and our perception of truth. To say that an hour was an eon is not true except on the experiential level, and little is as falsifying as our experience. This is why Stevens' life-long theme was the disjunction between reality and the imagination, between the way things were and the way things seemed to us. Auden suggests that we wouldn't care about poetry (or probably any art) if it was actually truthful, but only if it replicates the falsity of experience.

As if showing the impossibility of truth isn't trying to show truth in itself? Complete paradox and reeks of shallow criticism that continues to stain post-modernism because shallow critics have yet to realize this view never really took place:

If "the impossibility of truth" is the only truth then it would render all other truths as falsities or, at best, half-truths. This isn't a paradox any more than Godel's Incompleteness Theorems, or the notion that all logic is founded on assumed, ie unproven, premises. I don't know what you mean "this view never really took place," especially when you didn't go beyond listing modernist authors. Modernism was the first to confront the problem of multiple and fractured perspectives, and the only difference between them and the postmodernists was that the modernists found it to be a trauma that needed to be solved. Eliot and Auden found that wholeness in Christianity; a reactionary attitude towards a problem they otherwise found unsolvable (at least Auden tried a little harder and longer than Eliot). Stevens found it, much like William Blake, in art, in his hypothesized "supreme fiction." The postmodernists, rather than attempting to shore the fragments against ruin, decided to utilize them as if they were a playground, throwing them together willy-nilly in as many combinations as possible; it's what we see especially in Ashbery as it pertains to poetry, but we also see it a great deal even in the classical formalists like Merrill, whose omnivorous formalism is not unlike Ashbery's omnivorous levels of diction, speech acts, and shifting references. The only way one could possibly argue that postmodernism hasn't deeply rooted itself in literature is to completely ignore most of the last 60-or-so years.

You cannot have a worthy piece of literature without truth..as I just stated.

Yes, thank you for repeating the cliche and utterly failing to address ANY of the criticisms made against such attempts at attaining truth in art or literature. Your summary dismissals of postmodernism, New Criticism, Deconstruction, etc. are hardly arguments against their claims. Now who's being utterly superficial?

[Aere Perennius]

That said, if you think Pope was sincere you obviously don't get the role of satire, irony, and sarcasm, which doesn't make its point by sincerity but rather by the intentional perception of insincerity.

That said, it's obviously you have a different view one what sincerity is. But besides that, I only said "great" artwork contains sincere truth —this does not mean they are entirely made of it. If Pope had nothing sincere to say in Rape of the Lock, to take from that horrible Auden poem you posted, "who would read it?".

If "the impossibility of truth" is the only truth then it would render all other truths as falsities or, at best, half-truths. This isn't a paradox any more than Godel's Incompleteness Theorems, or the notion that all logic is founded on assumed, ie unproven, premises.

Thank you for citing those to universal axioms...oh wait. (And your ironic understanding of Godel "true but not provable" makes me laugh) To say truth is an impossibility is a truth IS a paradox.

I don't know what you mean "this view never really took place," especially when you didn't go beyond listing modernist authors. Modernism was the first to confront the problem of multiple and fractured perspectives, and the only difference between them and the postmodernists was that the modernists found it to be a trauma that needed to be solved. Eliot and Auden found that wholeness in Christianity; a reactionary attitude towards a problem they otherwise found unsolvable (at least Auden tried a little harder and longer than Eliot).

Your proposing that they found it unsolvable (not provable and nonsensical considering these writers said otherwise) yet Eliot relied on theology to solve it for him...that doesn't make sense. I think I'll ignore the rest of your nonsense generalizations.

Yes, thank you for repeating the cliche and utterly failing to address ANY of the criticisms made against such attempts at attaining truth in art or literature. Your summary dismissals of postmodernism, New Criticism, Deconstruction, etc. are hardly arguments against their claims. Now who's being utterly superficial?

The rest of the world all but dismissed them rather quickly. Why waste breath on such ideas that are tired and untrue.

Btw, Read Coleridge's Biographia Literaria or du Bellay's prose works, and you'll see a true individual mind working on the "canon;" hopefully I'll never hear you mention Bloom again. It's been fun but I should let you go back to your pathetic life of gambling. G'day mate.

[Pierre Menard]

Oh my, let me take a guess... you're a poet?

Seriously.

No, but I actually read poetry and have a clue about literature. To categorise all poetry as something any teenager could do with relative skill shows an absolutely outstanding amount of ignorance about the medium and about literature as a whole. Like, you're in a whole new universe of ignorance. It's just patently laughable. Go and read and learn and gain some understanding, please.

[Iain Sparrow]

No, but I actually read poetry and have a clue about literature. To categorise all poetry as something any teenager could do with relative skill shows an absolutely outstanding amount of ignorance about the medium and about literature as a whole. Like, you're in a whole new universe of ignorance. It's just patently laughable. Go and read and learn and gain some understanding, please.

How wonderfully condescending you are.

"Poets are like the Postal Service — a group of people sedulously doing something that we no longer need, under the misapprehension that they are offering us a vital service."

Poetry once was the way the news got out, how stories were told, myths born, a record of humankind's exploits. It was radical and it had the power to move mountains, spark revolutions. Now, it does none of those things.

Is that ignorant enough for you?

[MorpheusSandman]

But besides that, I only said "great" artwork contains sincere truth —this does not mean they are entirely made of it. If Pope had nothing sincere to say in Rape of the Lock, to take from that horrible Auden poem you posted, "who would read it?".

Neither of us know if anything in The Rape of the Lock is sincere. From what I can tell given the context in which it was written, it seems mostly an exercise in aesthetics and social defusion. I could believe that Pope's vastly inferior Essay on Man is "sincere," but Rape of the Lock? It strikes me as mostly feigned, or, at least, quite unconcerned with truth values. Anyway, let's also not overlook these other salient points:

1. Terrible art also contains sincere truths. Most everything in the Tay Bridge Disaster is both sincere and true. Melodramatic teen poetry is as sincere as a heart-attack, and most of it is probably true as well.
2. Sincerity and truth don't necessarily go together; at the very least, experiential truth is rarely actual truth.
3. Insincerity can reveal truths as easily as sincerity, since the apprehension of truth is always partially the responsibility of the reader, and the reader doesn't rely on the author's sincerity or lack thereof to reach any possible truth.
4. We rarely really know if an author is sincere or not. A great many believe in the maxim that the drama that breathes life into literature arises from uncertainty, the clear expression of mixed feelings.

(And your ironic understanding of Godel "true but not provable" makes me laugh) To say truth is an impossibility is a truth IS a paradox.

Care to explain why it makes you laugh? One can always add the "except this one" addendum to "truth is an impossibility," which easily quells the paradox.

Anyway, you've gotten away from my original point, which was concerned more with truth as its expressed in art as opposed to truth in general. I think most, eg, would accept the truths found in the formal systems of math and science, but art is neither. Much of 20th century criticism was heavily involved with pointing out how the same texts can support contradictory interpretations, or in which there is not enough evidence within the work to decide what "truth" is being stated in any absolute sense. One of the clearest examples of this is in the controversy over Wordsworth's A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal. Brian Caraher wrote a whole book on it. If this kind of ambiguity of meaning can be built up over such a simple lyric poem, imagine how easily it is to build them up over the course of a novel, epic, or any narrative!

Your proposing that they found it unsolvable (not provable and nonsensical considering these writers said otherwise) yet Eliot relied on theology to solve it for him...that doesn't make sense.

A little reading comprehension please. I said they otherwise (ie, without religion) found it unsolvable. Whether it was ACTUALLY solvable with religion is another matter.

My own opinion is that it solved it for them psychologically, but it doesn't solve anything for anyone looking for something more objective, consistent, and capable of accommodating the moral, scientific, and philosophical revolutions that have taken place in the 20th century. Stevens saw it for what it was; a comforting illusion that, while once able to embody the moral, philosophical, and social ideals of man, had become too obsolete in the lights of the modern world. It offered a too easy means to sink back into Blake's nobodaddy, the authoritarian leader masquerading as a god, in an attempt to shut out all of those pesky, oppressed minorities demanding that their voices be heard too. It was an escape from the trauma, a denial of what they had recognized. Not a real solution, but merely another illusion to live by.

The rest of the world all but dismissed them rather quickly. Why waste breath on such ideas that are tired and untrue.

To this laymen this looks suspiciously like you're refusing to address them because you know nil about them. What "rest of the world" dismissed them? How about naming some actual thinkers/critics/academics (or anyone) and citing their dismissive arguments. What's more, why don't you try listing what ideas, specifically, are "tired and untrue" and arguing why they're tired and untrue? Of course, this would require you to know what the ideas actually are to begin with, and it's starting to look like all your bloviating is doing little more than masking your ignorance on the subject. Epecially when:

Read Coleridge's Biographia Literaria or du Bellay's prose works, and you'll see a true individual mind working on the "canon;"

You cite guys that have been dead for over a century in a response to being challenged about Modern and Postmodern literary theories! What in the world makes you think Coleridge or Du Bellay had it all right?

It's been fun but I should let you go back to your pathetic life of gambling.

And I'll let you go back to your pathetic life of... well, what is it you do besides harassing me on a message board?

[MorpheusSandman]

"Poets are like the Postal Service — a group of people sedulously doing something that we no longer need, under the misapprehension that they are offering us a vital service."

Poetry once was the way the news got out, how stories were told, myths born, a record of humankind's exploits. It was radical and it had the power to move mountains, spark revolutions.

This is Golden Age nonsense that has been reiterated by many (including poets) going back centuries. In most any poets' writing dealing with poetry as a subject there's this delightful delusion that once poets were these hugely influential, appreciated, important figures, while today they're ignored, disregarded, trivial, etc. You can find it from in almost every age going back at least to Ovid and at least as far ahead as Shelley. Here's a newsflash: poetry has almost always been ignored and considered trivial. Yes, we can find a few exceptions, but they are, indeed, exceptions rather than rules. What I think happens is that people confuse the contemporary fame of canonical authors (ie, Homer) with a "golden age" when all poets were appreciated with that level of zeal. Most don't seem to get that canonical appreciation is a slow accumulation over time and that contemporary audiences/critics are always far more ambivalent.

I think most poets, if they're realistic at all, realize that poetry is niche art and that any level of recognition they receive will be equally niche in their lifetime and, at best, they have a long shot of making it into the canon and subjected to poor, unsuspecting, equally uncaring students. I certainly don't know where you get the idea that they "think they are offering us a vital service." Most of the greats of the last century seemed, by and large, to be pretty quiet, modest, and unassuming people, content to keep to themselves and go about their business. Little about them suggest that they felt what they did was "vitally important." You don't GET much more humble than Auden's "poetry makes nothing happen." Yet I don't think novelists come off any better; the best are usually similarly niche, and the rest are either unknown/minor figures, cult heroes, or popular entertainers, whose notoriety lasts no longer than their own generation. It's quite rare that you have that crossover of popular entertainer AND great artist.

So, yeah, your whole spiel does still seem quite ignorant.

[stlukesguild]

Jeez... looks like they let out the trolls, the morons, and the college sophomores for spring break.

[Iain Sparrow]

This is Golden Age nonsense that has been reiterated by many (including poets) going back centuries. In most any poets' writing dealing with poetry as a subject there's this delightful delusion that once poets were these hugely influential, appreciated, important figures, while today they're ignored, disregarded, trivial, etc. You can find it from in almost every age going back at least to Ovid and at least as far ahead as Shelley. Here's a newsflash: poetry has almost always been ignored and considered trivial. Yes, we can find a few exceptions, but they are, indeed, exceptions rather than rules. What I think happens is that people confuse the contemporary fame of canonical authors (ie, Homer) with a "golden age" when all poets were appreciated with that level of zeal. Most don't seem to get that canonical appreciation is a slow accumulation over time and that contemporary audiences/critics are always far more ambivalent.

I think most poets, if they're realistic at all, realize that poetry is niche art and that any level of recognition they receive will be equally niche in their lifetime and, at best, they have a long shot of making it into the canon and subjected to poor, unsuspecting, equally uncaring students. I certainly don't know where you get the idea that they "think they are offering us a vital service." Most of the greats of the last century seemed, by and large, to be pretty quiet, modest, and unassuming people, content to keep to themselves and go about their business. Little about them suggest that they felt what they did was "vitally important." You don't GET much more humble than Auden's "poetry makes nothing happen." Yet I don't think novelists come off any better; the best are usually similarly niche, and the rest are either unknown/minor figures, cult heroes, or popular entertainers, whose notoriety lasts no longer than their own generation. It's quite rare that you have that crossover of popular entertainer AND great artist.

So, yeah, your whole spiel does still seem quite ignorant.

Exactly what is it that you're arguing for?.. poetry is seldom published outside of the internet, nobody pays money for it, and has long since fallen below "niche" status.

Poetry is dead.
Newsweek announced it years ago... http://www.newsweek.com/poetry-dead-...ly-care-137385

[Iain Sparrow]

Jeez... looks like they let out the trolls, the morons, and the college sophomores for spring break.

Well, I don't know... name calling seems rather sophomoric.

State your case for poetry.

[MorpheusSandman]

poetry is seldom published outside of the internet,

Every major literary journal and publishing house (that I can think of off the top of my head, at least) publishes poetry, so this is demonstrably incorrect.

nobody pays money for it,

Poetry Magazine has a larger circulation now than it ever has, so somebody must be paying for it.

and has long since fallen below "niche" status.

What the hell is "below niche status?"

Poetry is dead.

Again, this has been reiterated in almost every generation going back to the Romans. Reports of its death are always greatly exaggerated.

I remember once reading a lovely little quote in Poetry Magazine that went something like: "Can poetry matter? The fact that we're even asking this question reveals how bad things have gotten. When things are going well, there's no question that poetry doesn't matter."

Poetry has almost always been one of those superfluous trivialities that just happens to matter a lot to a few people that care enough to keep it going. I don't see it being any deader now than it's ever been. THAT was the gist of my previous argument. You seem to share the common delusion that somehow poetry matters less now than it ever has; I'd say poetry matters as much now as it almost always has. Not much has changed.

[JCamilo]

Well, I don't know... name calling seems rather sophomoric.

State your case for poetry.

You would need a case against poetry, which so far, you failed to provide. You just claimed you could write a good poem if you wanted, which you did not and this would only prove there is good poetry and justify you writing more poems.

Then you came with the silly Mary vs. Percey, with seemded like someone condemming popcorn for being hot and not cold like ice cream, rather than anything else. You just claimed frankstein was better, then in the most silly way said - a very flawed novel - could withstand any poem. Which is just an opinion and a one that ignore a larage bulk of the literature.

Claiming a histerical girl can pull a poem? Dan Brown can pull a novel. Paulo Coelho too and his lyrics are as cheap as his novels. And Jane Austen could write great novels, but her poems...

[MorpheusSandman]

And Jane Austen could write great novels, but her poems...

I wasn't even aware Austen wrote poems. George Eliot was another great novelist/mediocre poet.

[JCamilo]

Yeah, never thougth about it until I saw an article that had pictures of her personal writtings and there was a image of a poem. After this I went to research and it appears that every place mentions she wrote poems - most juvenile stuff - and I just refused to see. Logical, after all who would dabble in literature in the XVIII/XIX without trying a poem or two? I suspect Hemingway also found easier to write novels than poems.

Anyways, just to be clear: I am not claiming good novelists (or prose writers) cannot write good poems. Chesterton was able, Melville was able, Joyce was able... (Not mentioning Bronte sisters, Stevenson, Voltaire and a few others who were first poets or you cannot just claim they were just anything, but obviously had no problems with prose or poems ), just that Narnia's Lion claim that just anyone can pen a good poem and not anyone can pen a novel is pointless. Sometimes you can write a novel and fail completely to write a good poem.

[cacian]

I wasn't even aware Austen wrote poems. George Eliot was another great novelist/mediocre poet.

the mediocrity lies in the way of words. one unawares that there is a stop every line or two. one or two words a stop then perhaps another couple more. poetry teaches you that.the stop and start is an important phase of writing, the faster one grasps this the better off one is. speed is everything it teaches control.
a novel lets you go on and on. it is never ending.

[Poetaster]

Poetry romanticizes, idealizes, and ultimately corrupts the truth... novels, the really good ones, illuminate the truth. In my opinion.

Then your opinion is wrong. Take anything by T.S. Eliot and see how that romanticizes or idealizes the subject matter. Or, hell, just look at that Larkin poem, 'This Be the Verse'