Does Poetry Make Anything Happen?

[AuntShecky]

W.H. Auden, one of the greatest poets of the century just past, wrote the gorgeous elegy "In Memory of W.B. Yeats"published a year after Yeats's death in January, 1939.

A fragment of a line in that poem reads:
"For poetry makes nothing happen. . ."

I read that line twice yesterday: in the morning when I was looking for models of elegies and later yesterday afternoon in an article on Slate.com. (By the bye, the author of the Slate article misattributed the line to Ezra Pound.)

Anyway, I wonder if our brilliant LitNetters might discuss their thoughts on of Auden's poetic statement.

Do you think poetry matters at all? Does it matter to anyone other than people who think they write poetry or actual readers of poetry, the number of the latter alas considerably smaller than the latter.

Why do so few people read poetry today?

Does poetry make anything at all "happen"? If so, what happens. Why? How?

I'm eagerly anticipating a multitude of replies.

Auntie

[LitNetIsGreat]

Well, I can't help but to think of the words of Wilde for a couple of instances. Firstly, the famous line from the preface of Doran Gray "all art is quite useless" and to add a new angle to the question "Why do so few people read poetry today?" with (from my bad memory) "the art form that has survived the best is poetry because the public do not read it, and therefore do not influence it." In other words the popular market does not infect or dilute the original art form, therefore you could argue that it is a good thing that most people don't read poetry.

With all that said, I do not want to take the line from Auden "For poetry makes nothing happen" out of context for I am unfamiliar with the poem, or at least it doesn't spring to mind at present.

Anyway, back to the questions:


Do you think poetry matters at all?

Well it does for me, my passion and love of literature makes it so. What others think I care little for, I do care, but it is little.


Does it matter to anyone other than people who think they write poetry or actual readers of poetry, the number of the latter alas considerably smaller than the latter

I don't quite get what you mean, I have had a long day, say again?


Why do so few people read poetry today?

I think to some extent you could argue that written poetry has always been read and appreciated by a select audience, granted it was more popular in the past with the general public, but you could say it came under threat as mass literature with the invent of the novel as a literary form. Certainly going into the 20th century the 'new' media of film and cinema has pushed poetry even further down the scale. Some big generalisations here granted, but I am thinking in general terms at this point. Now of course the form of poetry is even further away from the mass audience with the importance and influence of digital technologies. Actually today more people write poetry than actually read it (and most of it is rubbish).


Does poetry make anything at all "happen"? If so, what happens. Why? How?

That's quite a big set of questions in its own right. For me poetry gets under the skin and invades the mind, it is still the 'highest form of literature' in my opinion, even if that is unpopular with the postmodernist brigade. Poetry can do so much in so little space. Good poetry can affect all sides of human emotion. Really poetry is everything, even if today most people think it is nothing.

[JBI]

The line is in context of the War, both finished and brewing, and parallels Yeats' last poem, Under Ben Bulben. The poem was clearly in Auden's mind while he was writing, but I think the line refers specifically to the closing lines:

Cast a cold eye,
On life, On death
Horseman pass By!


In truth, Auden thought the world had ultimately failed, and I think that is why he left England, never to return, just after the composition of this poem. The beginning of the second World War only heightened his disillusionment.

[AuntShecky]

Thanks for your replies. Here are Auden's lines that follow the
line in question:

For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.


As to the line "poetry makes nothing happen,"Auden hated theatricality, or the habit poets have of regarding their role as more important than it really is, either as guardians of revelation (Yeats) or "unacknowledged legislation for mankind." (Shelley.)The introduction to Auden's section in the Norton anthology states
that Auden "has questioned the efficacy of his art even while delighting in it. Though much of his early work is prophetic of social and political change, he repeatedly insists that poetry can have no value in other spheres."

Indeed,as the poster above states, the presage of looming war was on Auden's mind, also he may have felt a little twinge for having criticized Yeats's unapologetically blatant mysticism and dabbling in the occult. Auden, by contrast, was rather straightforward, and in one of poetry's main "occupational hazards" --what's more important, sound or sense?-- Yeats favored the former and Auden, the latter. But reading this elegy the reader can infer the deep respect and esteem which Auden held for the Irish bard.

According to the introduction in my trusty Norton anthology(I'll paraphrase), Auden felt a connection with the sensibilities of T.S. Eliot; consciously avoiding the Romantic tradition, he was
a "disenchanter," albeit with images both "homely" and "abstract," not to mention his gifts for ironic understatement unparalleled wit.

Over the centuries poetry has certainly lost the almost-religious significance and influence upon the public weal as it had in Homer's time, or even as late as Elizabethan times, in which poetic virtuosity, almost a kind of competitive gamemanship arose.

Eliot famously defined poetry as "a superior form of entertainment," and if you buy that notion, then it will explain why poetry as an entertainment option is way down on the contemporary list of movies, videos, Internet sites, and the
smorgasbord of offerings for the 2lst century consumer. I do believe that very few folks bother reading poems these days, and even the existence of poetry is publicly acknowledged only on high-falutin', solemn occasions, such as an Inaugural ceremony or weddings and funerals. If you define poetry broadly, and include song lyrics in that spectrum (which I do, especially among the lyrics of American standard songs composed in the 1930s and 40s), or even if you think that rap lyrics are a form of poetry, then poetry still "matters" as an entertainment.

But as I implied in my original posting, more people think they write "poetry" than actually read it. There is a sad reason for this, I think, and that is that the teaching of poetry is given short shrift in the public schools. When the students are assigned poetry, more often than not the emphasis is on the "what" ("what is the poem saying?" rather than the "how" (why did the
poet use this particular technique?) Because poetry has not been properly taught, kids don't know how to read it. "It's too hard!" they might moan and groan.

Admittedly, the dense and nearly incomprehensibly abstract poetry of the last four or five decades may have contributed to
its own obscurity.


Like Eliot, Auden loved the traditions of old English poetry and the Church of England, though his religious beliefs differed from those of Eliot in that Auden was "earthier" and less mystical. He also differed from Eliot in that his political beliefs veered left. The responsibility of an individual to shift focus upon the greater good ("moral revolution") is a recurrent theme: "a change of heart." He revised his own poems over and over again, even after their initial publication.

It is true that Auden seemed to have turned his back on England in favor of the United States (the opposite of Eliot's situation.)

But the statement above that he left England forever, never to return isn't absolutely correct.

He became an American citizen in 1946, and divided his life between Greenwich Village and a retreat in lower Austria. Yet in 1972 he went home to his old college, Christ Church, in Oxford
where he died in 1973.

[JBI]

Who knows, it could easily just gesture to this:

Quattrocento put in paint
On backgrounds for a God or Saint
Gardens where a soul's at ease;
Where everything that meets the eye,
Flowers and grass and cloudless sky,
Resemble forms that are or seem
When sleepers wake and yet still dream,
And when it's vanished still declare,
With only bed and bedstead there,
That heavens had opened.

From Under Ben Bulben, W.B. Yeats.

In truth, poetry achieves its goal. It makes something happen. It just doesn't particularly work well for politics - though some have tried. Prose is more suited for political discourse, poetry is more suited for what is beneath the political discourse. It usually doesn't encourage people to rise up, but it shows the possibility.

[Virgil]

W.H. Auden, one of the greatest poets of the century just past, wrote the gorgeous elegy "In Memory of W.B. Yeats"published a year after Yeats's death in January, 1939.

A fragment of a line in that poem reads:
"For poetry makes nothing happen. . ."

I read that line twice yesterday: in the morning when I was looking for models of elegies and later yesterday afternoon in an article on Slate.com. (By the bye, the author of the Slate article misattributed the line to Ezra Pound.)

Anyway, I wonder if our brilliant LitNetters might discuss their thoughts on of Auden's poetic statement.

Surely. I have said that art does not move society, it reflects society. I think that is what Auden is saying too. Sure there are activist writers, but frankly I do not believe they move society. Everyone mentions Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin as having pushed the US toward confronting slavery and the civil war. Well, that debate had been going on for decades before the novel. At its most, perhaps the novel lit the powder keg, but the powder keg was loaded and ready to burst, but frankly even that I'm skeptical of. The country was headed for this civil war and it was an irreconcible difference where either a split was to occur or the South was to be catagorically defeated. I don't believe the novel had any substantial impact.


Do you think poetry matters at all? Does it matter to anyone other than people who think they write poetry or actual readers of poetry, the number of the latter alas considerably smaller than the latter.
Of course it matters. It captures the stories and language of our age. However, I also am skeptical that it captures more than that. People have seen some of my comments warning that you cannot assess an issue or a time and place from a work of art. It is a subjective opinion, not anthropological study nor an economic evaluation nor a statistical computation. It is based on anectdote and local mythology/urban legend from the impressions of a artist, and frankly artisit to me have never seemed all in tuned with reality. My goodness, here on lit net in recent days there is a popular thread that purports to claim we never went to the moon and that the moon landings were a hoax. But of course poetry and art matters because the stories and language matters and of course the aesthetics of art matter.


Why do so few people read poetry today?
Somewhere in the middle of the 19th century (in England and perhaps even the US but at other countries it may have been at a different time) a split developed between what we call artsy literature and more common/popular literature. I'm not exactly sure why and how the split developed but it did. I suspect it has something to do with one needing greater and greater knowledge of the intricacies of literature to appreciate the "artsy" stuff. A person can't just pick up TS Eliot without a good literature background and expect it to make sense. Poetry has fallen almost exclusively in the artsy side. Again I can't answer why.


Does poetry make anything at all "happen"? If so, what happens. Why? How?
I answered this above. In short no, becasue a poet is not an expert on anything other than poetry. Why would anyone heed the economic advice of a poet to solve the current economic problem?


I'm eagerly anticipating a multitude of replies.

Auntie
I hope that made sense. Good question Auntie. :)

[AuntShecky]

Thanks for weighing in on this, Virgil. Your well-considered responses are always refreshing.

[Scheherazade]

I cannot write a long reply at the moment but we need to define what it is that poetry is supposed to make happen -if anything- to be able to answer this question, no?

[The Comedian]

Whenever I confront a question such as the one you pose with reference to Auden's "For poetry makes nothing happen. . ." I always think to Robert Frost, who I think had the best take on the ultimate value of poetry.

His well-know phrase that poetry offers us (its readers) "a momentary stay against confusion" sums up what poetry "makes happen" quite well. To expound on this, I think that poetry affect the reader personally, quietly, and spiritually, and intellectually. But, baring a few exceptions here and there, it doesn't do much more than that.

Of course, its indirect influence may be great: someone is affected by a Shakespearean sonnet, T.S. Elliot's "Four Quartets," or the little poem my daughter wrote at day care today and is then moved to affect the world or her community in a some important way. . . .then sure poetry makes something happen in so much as the toast I had for breakfast helped me affect the world in some small way today.

[mayneverhave]

I answered this above. In short no, becasue a poet is not an expert on anything other than poetry. Why would anyone heed the economic advice of a poet to solve the current economic problem?

Strictly speaking, yes, but the simple fact that a man is a poet (even a talented poet) does not rule out his capabilities in other realms. I've read some of Yeats's political writings and, in addition to some of his scientific beliefs, he seems to have been completely backward. Philosophically I detest mysticism, but as a poet, Yeats is tops.

Concerning the U.S. economic problem, I'm sure some poets (like Pound) might have had a lot to say.

[Virgil]

Strictly speaking, yes, but the simple fact that a man is a poet (even a talented poet) does not rule out his capabilities in other realms. .
Sure, if he's got other expertise. I'm an engineer in my work life. If I were to ever become a poet, I do think I know something of engineering. If a poet or writer has other expertise, it's outside of his poetic talents. One doesn't accentuate the other.


I've read some of Yeats's political writings and, in addition to some of his scientific beliefs, he seems to have been completely backward. Philosophically I detest mysticism, but as a poet, Yeats is tops.
That's exactly my point.


Concerning the U.S. economic problem, I'm sure some poets (like Pound) might have had a lot to say
Oh I'm sure that he would have lots to say. Pound spoke about economics and it was all asinine. Like I said above, no one would or should take it seriously. But for some strange reason people take celebrities and poets/writers/artists seriously in endeavors they have no expertise. Amazing to me.


I cannot write a long reply at the moment but we need to define what it is that poetry is supposed to make happen -if anything- to be able to answer this question, no?

Yes, I was a little confused about it. I made an assumption Auntie was referring to social reform. But it was an assumption. She may have had other thoughts in mind.

[JBI]

Sidney, and later Eliot argued that poetry brings one to the gate of the Garden of Eden. I am of the same mind - the vision of the poetry, through the metaphor, allows for that which cannot be contained in words to be expressed through comparison, and trope.

There is a discussion going on amongst Canadian poets about whether one can actually write wilderness. The general conclusion is that though one cannot actually write wilderness, one can circle it, and come close to it, allowing for the reader's perceptions to get close enough that they can get the idea, and use their own imagination to take them over the fence. Metaphor allows for the unreal to temporarily be the real, through what Coleridge called the "suspension of disbelief". Metaphor is the soul of the imagination, and metaphor is the soul of poetry. One cannot feel, but one can relate, by means of comparison.

Only poetry can do that. Of course then, poetry then acknowledges its own failure. Ultimately it can only offer a glimpse, and ultimately that glimpse has to die. Poetry is bound to a cycle of time, and each word, line, stanza, and poem naturally has to die. But the words, through rereading, are allowed to be reborn within the reader's imagination, for a time, and to offer an outlet into another world.

This is the preoccupation of all poetry, and is perhaps done the best in great works, like Wordsworth's Inclinations Ode, Eliot's Four Quartets, Shakespeare's Great Sonnets, and Leopardi's Canti. One cannot walk into paradise through poetry, but one can come to the gate, and that is the function.

Where does that Plenty dwell, I’d n like to know,
Which fathered poor desire, as Plato taught?
Out on the real and endless waters go
Conquistador and stubborn Argonaut.
Where Buddha bathed, the golden bowl he brought
Gilded the stream, but stalled its living tide.
The sunlight withers as the verse is wrought.
I die of thirst, here at the fountain-side.

From The Ballade of the Duke of Orleans by Richard Wilbur, Bolding mine.

[Virgil]

Sidney, and later Eliot argued that poetry brings one to the gate of the Garden of Eden. I am of the same mind - the vision of the poetry, through the metaphor, allows for that which cannot be contained in words to be expressed through comparison, and trope.

That is a great statement JBI. I agree with it entirely.

[JBI]

Eliot says it far better than I can at the end of Burnt Norton:




Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.
Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts,
Not that only, but the co-existence,
Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end.
And all is always now. Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still. Shrieking voices
Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering,
Always assail them. The Word in the desert
Is most attacked by voices of temptation,
The crying shadow in the funeral dance,
The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera.


In fact, the whole collection of the Four Quartets seems to meditate on the limitations of words. Eliot can bring us to the Rose Garden, but we are unable to enter with him.

[mayneverhave]

This is a highly romantic view of literature, and as an artist and lover of art, I can appreciate it.

However, I'm plagued by doubt. This metaphysical "that which cannot be said"; how can we be sure it has any existence? Whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent. I understand how metaphor conveys a sense, a mood - if you will - but is it not merely the psychology of, in this case, T.S. Eliot, and not some grand artistic existence?

The Garden of Eden (in the way you use the term) is a beautiful thought, but how can we be sure it is nothing more?

[AuntShecky]

There is a discussion going on amongst Canadian poets about whether one can actually write wilderness. The general conclusion is that though one cannot actually write wilderness, one can circle it, and come close to it, allowing for the reader's perceptions to get close enough that they can get the idea, and use their own imagination to take them over the fence. Metaphor allows for the unreal to temporarily be the real, through what Coleridge called the "suspension of disbelief". Metaphor is the soul of the imagination, and metaphor is the soul of poetry. One cannot feel, but one can relate, by means of comparison.

Only poetry can do that. Of course then, poetry then acknowledges its own failure. Ultimately it can only offer a glimpse, and ultimately that glimpse has to die. Poetry is bound to a cycle of time, and each word, line, stanza, and poem naturally has to die. But the words, through rereading, are allowed to be reborn within the reader's imagination, for a time, and to offer an outlet into another world.

This is the preoccupation of all poetry, and is perhaps done the best in great works, like Wordsworth's Inclinations Ode, Eliot's Four Quartets, Shakespeare's Great Sonnets, and Leopardi's Canti. One cannot walk into paradise through poetry, but one can come to the gate, and that is the function.



Perhaps that notion -- the poet can describe or depict wilderness but he or she can't recreate it -- could possibly bring us closer to discovering what Auden meant.
"Nothing happens IN poetry." Something happens to the poet BEFORE he writes it (cf. "Tradition and Individual Talent" by T. S. Eliot.) Something happens when an educated -- or at least open-minded--reader experiences it. But the poem itself is the mere vessel or conduit, though I use the term "mere" advisedly.

Good verse approaches the gate to the Garden of Eden, and like the shadows in Plato's cave, poetry's estimates, approximations,descriptions, "metaphors," are one level removed from the reality.

Another line in Eliot's Four Quartets describes the
poem as a "raid on the inarticulate."

So as Scher rightly asked, we have to determine what poetry is before we could know whether anything happens
"in" it. Maybe we could say that a poem helps define
the indescribable-- the same role as ancient myths thought up to explain natural phenomena for which science
had not yet developed the ability nor the tools to explain.

[AuntShecky]

However, I'm plagued by doubt. This metaphysical "that which cannot be said"; how can we be sure it has any existence? Whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent. I understand how metaphor conveys a sense, a mood - if you will - but is it not merely the psychology of, in this case, T.S. Eliot, and not some grand artistic existence?



This is another extremely valid and significant philosophical
question:

Can there ever be such a thing as a "thought" without words to express it?

[Virgil]

This is another extremely valid and significant philosophical
question:

Can there ever be such a thing as a "thought" without words to express it?

I believe so. My dog has many thoughts, especially about dinner. I know she does. But she has no words that I can tell to express it.

[Scheherazade]

So as Scher rightly asked, we have to determine what poetry is before we could know whether anything happens
"in" it. Maybe we could say that a poem helps define
the indescribable-- the same role as ancient myths thought up to explain natural phenomena for which science
had not yet developed the ability nor the tools to explain.I think that would change from one poet to the other; poem to poem at times.

At times it might be a personal whisper to one person in particular or sometimes a shout over the roof tops for everyone to pay attention.

[AuntShecky]

I believe so. My dog has many thoughts, especially about dinner. I know she does. But she has no words that I can tell to express it.

Is that what conventional wisdom has come to know as
"thought" or is it instinct? Look at it this way:
Instinct: "I'm hungry."
Thought: "I wonder what Virgil will give me for dinner.
Maybe he'll give me Puppy Chow. Hope he doesn't make it
too soggy. I can't say I care much for Alpo, but at least it
smells "O-kay!"*

*Way back in the Way Back machine Arlene Francis used to do commercials for Alpo, which ended with her saying,
"And it smells. . . .o-kay!"

I don't know if you're old enough to remember the Alpo
commercials that Ed McMahon used to do "live" on the
Johnny Carson show. Occasionally the dog would turn his
nose up at the stuff, and while Ed tried to salvage the situation, Johnny would go into hysterics. One time Johnny actually pantomimed one of Man's best friends. He
got down on all fours and pretended to eat the Alpo.

[Virgil]

No it's definitely thought. My dog knows the way to places we go, makes turns, knows when its feeding time. She even makes decisions on which person to pester for certain things. She remembers people and other dogs. She knows my mother, even though she only sees her once a week and knows my mother's habits in the way she does things around the house. There is definitely cognition there. It's not human cognition, but there are thoughts.

[The Comedian]

Can there ever be such a thing as a "thought" without words to express it?

Sort of, I think. I agree with Virgil's interesting post about his dog and thoughts. Regarding humans, I think that we can have thoughts without words when we are infants and have no words. But once we have language, then thoughts without words are impossible. I don't know why, but based on my observations with the language development of my two daughters, it sure seems so to me.

Of course, I'm no psychologist.

EDIT: I'd still argue that poetry doesn't do a dang thing. It just sits there on the page. Of course, the people reading it, the people inspired by it can accomplish things. But even the emotional stuff that poetry expresses. . . . just ink on the page, pixels on the screen. . . . doing nothing, no different than the rocks by the river that runs by my house. Only people accomplish things.

[Virgil]

Sort of, I think. I agree with Virgil's interesting post about his dog and thoughts. Regarding humans, I think that we can have thoughts without words when we are infants and have no words. But once we have language, then thoughts without words are impossible. I don't know why, but based on my observations with the language development of my two daughters, it sure seems so to me.

Of course, I'm no psychologist.

But how do you know we don't have thoughts before the language comes to us? As I just read your post this thought came to me, but I really didn't formulate the language until after I started to articulate it. It's my perception that there is a millisecond of thought before language shapes it.

[rtc143]

Well, I think poetry is an expression of the writer, not something that NEEDS to be read anyways. But I agree that poetry today is to a considerable degree, pointless. Few people read it, and those who do usually criticize it for no apparent reason, like one of my rather provincial friends, who thinks anything involving reading and writing is as bad as sin! So, overall, I dont really know lol. bad answer i guess. but if you write it, write it for yourself.

[The Comedian]

But how do you know we don't have thoughts before the language comes to us? As I just read your post this thought came to me, but I really didn't formulate the language until after I started to articulate it. It's my perception that there is a millisecond of thought before language shapes it.

I don't really know. It just seems that way to me. Maybe we continue to have non-linguistic thoughts after we develop language. If we do, that non-linguistic thinking is some weird, weird, stuff. I mean, non-linguistic thinking has to have some form, right? If not language, then what?

[PSRemeshChandra]

The question, do poetry make anything happen, why and how, is a very good and relevant one. One of the chief objectives of poetry is to elevate human mind. It adds velocity to the otherwise inert mind. Mind at most times has only weight, and no velocity. We all know that weight into velocity is equal to momentum. An aeroplane lying on the ground has weight. When the motors are started and the fuel is ignited, it gains velocity and moves forward according to the momentum it acquires. At a particular level of momentum it takes-off. It cannot simply help lying there. This is exactly what capable poetry does to human mind. Poetry imparts speed and momentum to human mind and the momentum gained thus makes it take-off.

Poetry moves minds. Perhaps it's moving powers are far greater than the actual individual and social experiences of a person, considering the fact that poetry also contains reasonable arguments, logic and philosophy to master a given situation in human life. Thus when poetry moves minds, it is actually moving societies and nations. It is an undeniable fact that the great literary epics, whether it be the Ramayana, Mahabharatha, The Illiad, The Odessey, The Divine Comedy, The Song Of Roland or The Beowulf formed and decided the national character of India, Greece, Italy, France or England. They were what in which their national heritage, culture and civilization were preserved for the posterities. And they are what generations still look upto for inspiration and guidance. That poetry makes nothing happen is a fallacy. Pablo Neruda's Canto General and The Third Residence On Earth has been a fountain head, source and reservoire of revolutionary inspiration for the whole world since it's publication. Mayakovski's poems including Let The Rail Workers Awaken have been the most restricting force in Lenin's Russia. Premiere Lenin even said: I don't like this man, but his poem Those Who Hold Committees Daily tells well people's opinions about us committee-holders. This poem contained just two simple lines: Everyday committee, committee, committee: Nothing happens, nothing happens, and nothing happens.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Can there ever be such a thing as a "thought" without words to express it?

What about visual art? And music (sans lyrics, of course)? These both convey thoughts without words--often times more effectively than any words can.

As to the original query, I always think of a certain type of poetry when one asks for a practical value of poetry (I realize this is not the same query as the OP, but I think still close enough), and those are War poems, particularly some of the very vivid WWI poems. These poems convey the feelings of being in war--of what it felt like to be in the trenches and surrounded by death. No text book I've read does this.

I guess one could argue that there is no value in understanding the feelings of those who fought in wars, but I can't see how there isn't value in understanding the horror of war.

[AuntShecky]

Well the original posting appeared two years ago, but yours fooly still maintains some, if not all, the opinions expressed there in (apart from typing "latter" when I meant "former.")

There is a danger when we try to assign a work detail to art, literature, and poetry, attempt to make social workers out of literature, or teachers of youth, or consider the arts to be cheerleaders for the middle class. These issues were addressed in another different LitNet thread (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1007042#post1007042).

Even so, poetry does matter, but not in any pragmatic sense. It is worth reading, and in some cases, worth writing, but it is unfair to ask poetry to do anything other than to be itself.

Still, I wonder what Dr. Williams really meant with these lines:

It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.

[Theunderground]

I really have tried to get into poetry but blake is about the only pure poet i can really appreciate a little. I much think good prose is much more profound than poetry though that may be the opposite of classical thought.

As for thought,i am 100% sure that we can think non-linguistically,i mean what is a feeling? When pain first registers you dont internally say 'ouch' do you,you just feel the pain.

[jajdude]

I read somewhere once that poetry is a good thing to study for people who want to go to law school. Both poetry and law involve difficult texts I guess the main idea was. Philosophy too of course.

[Alexander III]

I really have tried to get into poetry but blake is about the only pure poet i can really appreciate a little. I much think good prose is much more profound than poetry though that may be the opposite of classical thought.

As for thought,i am 100% sure that we can think non-linguistically,i mean what is a feeling? When pain first registers you dont internally say 'ouch' do you,you just feel the pain.

What poets have you tried reading ?

[Synderesis]

I'm coming late to the party, but in terms of whether poetry makes anything happen, I think there is a distinct sense in which it does. While it may or may not directly engender drastic social or political change in the present, if we narrow our view to something like the history of ideas (broadly conceived), then poetry has had a demonstrable effectiveness.

For example, any deep engagement with Nietzsche or Heidegger must take into account the incredible influence which Hölderlin's work had on their respective systems of thought. Though this is a specific instance and I can't speak with any knowledge to the dialectic between poetry and philosophy outside of 19th and 20th century Germany, I would expect to find similar developments in other areas/traditions.

Whether this (perhaps narrow) sphere of influence is of lasting significance to the larger world, or if it reinforces an image of poetry as marginal and unimportant, I leave it up to others to decide--though I would undoubtedly espouse the former position.

[Theunderground]

I have read bits of nearly all the great poets east and west,why do you ask?

[stlukesguild]

Originally Posted by AuntShecky:

This is another extremely valid and significant philosophical
question:

Can there ever be such a thing as a "thought" without words to express it?

I would assume so. Thus we have dance and painting and music and other such forms of artistic expression. One of the problems that artists face within these genre is that criticism exclusively takes the form of the written word and the written word literally cannot fully grasp the non-written art form and as a result such writers often lean toward a focus upon that which has a strong narrative element. It is far easier to discuss and dissect this in words:

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5098/5542795297_117b0b0a27_b.jpg

than it is to attempt the same with something like this:

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5256/5543374542_5a49a2024e_z.jpg

The Comedian-I think that we can have thoughts without words when we are infants and have no words. But once we have language, then thoughts without words are impossible. I don't know why, but based on my observations with the language development of my two daughters, it sure seems so to me.

Of course, I'm no psychologist.

Virgil-But how do you know we don't have thoughts before the language comes to us? As I just read your post this thought came to me, but I really didn't formulate the language until after I started to articulate it. It's my perception that there is a millisecond of thought before language shapes it.

Maybe we continue to have non-linguistic thoughts after we develop language. If we do, that non-linguistic thinking is some weird, weird, stuff. I mean, non-linguistic thinking has to have some form, right? If not language, then what?

I am obviously with Virgil on this. I would assume... first of all... that human beings are capable of thought without... beyond written/spoken language. Such language is simply an abstraction that must be learned. The child prior to speech thinks. Helen Keller... prior to developing a non-spoken language surely was capable of thought. Our dreams and day-dreams involve thought and often take the form of visual images... sounds... even other senses.

Looking at the two paintings above, that of the famous Guernica by Picasso and that of the landscape by Bonnard one can grasp Picasso's achievement and put it in words far easier than one can Bonnard's painting. Bonnard was and remains known as a "painter's painter". A great many painters recognize something in Bonnard's paintings that can't be simply put into words... something that those not highly attuned to the purely visual fail to grasp.

As a painter I can assure you that I think in the purely visual quite often. I am attuned to certain visual stimuli and think in images quite often before/beyond thinking in words. Unlike some artist, I am also a great lover of literature... an obsessive reader... and thus I have the ability to put much into the written or spoken word after the fact. I would assume that something similar exist in the mind of the musician or composer in terms of thinking in sound, in the mind of the dancer... and perhaps even the athlete in thinking in terms of movement and space, and in the mind of the mathematician in thinking through numbers... a language no less invented than music, art, or the word.

[JCamilo]

Any biologist will just point that Whales and dolphins not only think, but also teach and have fun. They will point birds can learn from experience and teach it to other birds. And that humans developed social organization and use of utensils even before any form of developed language, imagine written language.

[shortstoryfan]

This is all speculation.

First, I would say that I totally agree with JBI on the aims of poetry. I totally agree with Virgil that we do have thoughts before language.

The reason why we think we don't have thoughts without language is because we don't realize how fast the brain moves. Thoughts literally flash. The thing we perceive as a "thought" is probably actually our attempt to put the flash (the synapse firing) into words. And what are we trying to put into words? In some ways, everything we say or "think" shares a commonality with what JBI said the goal of poetry was...to name the unnameable, to describe that which can't be described. Which really, is everything, because what language is trying to communicate is very experiential.

I'm sorry I am so bad at expressing myself in language, but hopefully when I finish Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, I can write a little bit more about it on my blog (and with better formed "thoughts").

[Ezekiel 4:9]

I agree with I. A. Richards' claim that "poetry is capable of saving us." What Richards meant by this extravagent claim was that the poetry of genius represents the highest level of adaptive psychological organization imaginable, hence we ought to turn to it as a model and pattern for the development of our own experiences. Unlike religion and science, poetry enables us to fulfill our nature as rationally and emotionally complex beings. Whereas the former depend heavily of "suppressions and restrictions" in order to make determinate "statements" about life, poetry "realizes" or dramatizes its content in a way that allows us to experience rather than merely know or believe. Thus the basis of aesthetic response is "imaginative assent" rather than "verifiable belief." Poetry is "the completest mode of utterance" and the standard of "unmitigated experience." In a world of confusion, it can supply us with systems of experience, or "attitudes," that attune us to existence without neutralizing it (as in science), simplifying it (as in popular literature), or falsifying it (as in religion). All this amounts to an argument that the poetry of genius ought to be the central mythos of modern civilization.

[Ezekiel 4:9]

By the way, if anyone is interested in learning about the "value" of poetry as poetry, I suggest a return to the grandfathers of twentieth-century English criticism, namely I. A. Richards, F. R. Leavis, Cleanth Brooks, W. K. Wimsatt, and Northrop Frye. Steer clear of postmodernism, cultural studies, and postcolonialism. In my opinion, at least, a strong interest in these discourses constitutes a departure from literature as such.

[Paulclem]

I agree with I. A. Richards' claim that "poetry is capable of saving us." What Richards meant by this extravagent claim was that the poetry of genius represents the highest level of adaptive psychological organization imaginable, hence we ought to turn to it as a model and pattern for the development of our own experiences. Unlike religion and science, poetry enables us to fulfill our nature as rationally and emotionally complex beings. Whereas the former depend heavily of "suppressions and restrictions" in order to make determinate "statements" about life, poetry "realizes" or dramatizes its content in a way that allows us to experience rather than merely know or believe. Thus the basis of aesthetic response is "imaginative assent" rather than "verifiable belief." Poetry is "the completest mode of utterance" and the standard of "unmitigated experience." In a world of confusion, it can supply us with systems of experience, or "attitudes," that attune us to existence without neutralizing it (as in science), simplifying it (as in popular literature), or falsifying it (as in religion). All this amounts to an argument that the poetry of genius ought to be the central mythos of modern civilization.

This is a big claim and not one that I would support. I think poetry can have an effect, but only as part of a movement or a cultural shift. I don't see any validity in the claim that

"realizes" or dramatizes its content in a way that allows us to experience rather than merely know or believe

Poetry is a construction of language, and in no way can supplant experience or belief. It can have a powerful emotional effect, and can introduce radical ideas thought, but rarely does it change lives unless it is part of a wider cultural experience that is acted upon by the reader.

[JCamilo]

As far I recall, this works if the reader (or viewer) carry this experiences within, so he revify the feelings of such sittuation and may (or not) reconsider it. Not as he living an experience that belonged to other (the poet). Dante loves in a way, I love in another...

[Ecurb]

Why do so few people read poetry today?

Does poetry make anything at all "happen"? If so, what happens. Why? How?

I'm eagerly anticipating a multitude of replies.

Auntie

It seems to me that Auden was reacting to not only Yeats, but also to other Modernist poets who specifically saw their role as that of New Prophets in a Post-Religious age. Eliot, Pound and others consciously imagined this to be one of their roles. And, of course, it is true that poetry is magical and transcendent, and was often used in magical or religious rituals.

Here’s a similar post-religious question? If there is no God, does prayer “make anything happen”? Of course it does. It just doesn’t make happen what believers claim it can make happen. It makes something else happen. We can't measure what it makes happen, and we can't measure what poetry makes happen, either.

[Paulclem]

I'm not sure what you mean JC. Can you clarify.

On wordless thought: I distinctly remember one of those heightened moments during a physical game - rugby - where things are happenning fast. There's no time to formulate the thought "I'm going to tackle that bloke" - you just do it as if by instinct. Playing rugby is not an instinctive thing but it utilises instinctive action.

If you have time - only a little time - you can form wordy thoughts about something. You can certainly have momentary wordless experiences such as awe upon seeing a beautiful vista, a piece of art or hearing a tune etc etc. I think we explain it with words after.

[Cunninglinguist]

Why do so few people read poetry today?

Probably because the language is difficult to understand.


Does poetry make anything at all "happen"? If so, what happens. Why? How?

Of course art has some value, otherwise it would not occur. But is the value intrinsic or instrumental? Seems like the debate about art has always been a semantic one – whenever a piece of “art” has had an impact, those that maintain art is useless assert that it was this or that philosophical or what-have-you aspect of the work, not the artistic ones; but then 'useless' is in the very definition of art. I think the proponents of this definition do have a point, though. If we look at architecture, for instance, it is the unnecessary parts (or lack thereof) of the building that give it an artistic identity.


I think to some extent you could argue that written poetry has always been read and appreciated by a select audience, granted it was more popular in the past with the general public.

If one defines rap as poetry then poetry is more popular than ever.

I think a proper definition of poetry is in order here. Defined in the sense that most academicians would prefer, it would be absurd to expect poetry to be popular. The vernaculars of the classics are difficult to understand in a modern context, thus whatever is expressed becomes less accessible to the layman, unlike rap which employs, to its demographic, a familiar vernacular.


Eliot says it far better than I can at the end of Burnt Norton:

This reminds me of something from Shakespeare’s sonnet 29:

Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate


I have read bits of nearly all the great poets east and west,why do you ask?

probably because Blake is about as deep as a kiddie pool. If one wants religious depth one ought to pick up Milton or Dante.

[JCamilo]

I'm not sure what you mean JC. Can you clarify.

.

The idea that poetry, or any art form, replaces experience does not imply it replaces with the experience of the poet (or painter, singer). You relate or react to a piece, because it can find on your the previous experience which have in your memory a similar "feeling taste".

So, when we read poem, we do not have the same feeling or experience of the writer. But it "clicks" on the feelings (all prety basic), which brings us memories, with that our own experience. So can live the feelings similar to your first kiss, but you cannt actually have a first kiss.

A bit like Wordsworth idea of memory and writing poetry. As many things, we can move writing to reading.

[Ezekiel 4:9]

Richards' is not talking about the mere act of reading poetry. Of course reading isn't the same as living. But what we read (if we are serious readers) strongly influences how we live, and how we live (if we are serious in this sense as well--that is, well-rounded, emotionally adjusted, intellectually curious, and imaginatively vigorous) strongly influences what we read and how. Poetry is part of the continuum of experience (as you suggest by your reference to culture), but the blind force of culture itself cannot be the sole criterion of value in aesthetic or literary matters (unless we are willing to concede relativistic merit to Hitler's repressive standards of art). It is the epitome of culture with which we ought to concern ourselves, i.e. "the poet" (who is a metonymy for the Artist par excellence). Richards' point is that the poetry of genius is the epitome of experience (from which culture follows). Poets, in his view, are better experiencers, so to speak, than the rest of us, so we should endeavor to be more like them. I admit that this view is shockingly grandiose and strongly suggestive of displaced religious sentiment (e.g. "be like Christ"), but I find it refreshing and stimulating despite its superlatives. These sentiments were the foundation on which academic English was originally constructed, until French structuralist theories "deconstructed" the edifice of humanism and gave us postmodernism. I personally see more cutting edge potential in a return to the old school humanism of our grandfathers than in the tedious identity politics of "cultural studies" and "postcolonialism."

Hulme referred to Romanticism as "spilt religion." But Richards, Leavis, et al. weren't so far off the mark. Pejorative implications aside, poetry is in many ways akin to religion. There is an argument to be made here, although I doubt it would be very popular in the secular humanities. For one, the language of poetry and the language of religion have much in common. Most noticably, they both tend to work metaphor in a degree unparalleled by other discourses, and, arguably, they both privilege the emotive dimension of language over its referential or strictly propositional dimension. Where Richards and Leavis might have said they both chiefly concern the complex expression of feeling, a postmodernist might say they both privilege the signifier over the signified: "In the beginning was the Word."

What are we doing when we read poetry, or any serious literature for that matter, and how does it resemble or differ from what we do when we read scripture (assuming that we read it, or that we used to read it)? This isn't a question for everyone, I admit, but you don't have to be religious to look into it. I used to read the Bible as Truth, but now I only read it as literature. Though, I have enormous difficulty stating exactly what this distinction implies, hence my question.

[Paulclem]

The idea that poetry, or any art form, replaces experience does not imply it replaces with the experience of the poet (or painter, singer). You relate or react to a piece, because it can find on your the previous experience which have in your memory a similar "feeling taste".

So, when we read poem, we do not have the same feeling or experience of the writer. But it "clicks" on the feelings (all prety basic), which brings us memories, with that our own experience. So can live the feelings similar to your first kiss, but you cannt actually have a first kiss.

A bit like Wordsworth idea of memory and writing poetry. As many things, we can move writing to reading.

I see and agree with that. Thanks.

[Paulclem]

Richards' is not talking about the mere act of reading poetry. Of course reading isn't the same as living. But what we read (if we are serious readers) strongly influences how we live, and how we live (if we are serious in this sense as well--that is, well-rounded, emotionally adjusted, intellectually curious, and imaginatively vigorous) strongly influences what we read and how. Poetry is part of the continuum of experience (as you suggest by your reference to culture), but the blind force of culture itself cannot be the sole criterion of value in aesthetic or literary matters (unless we are willing to concede relativistic merit to Hitler's repressive standards of art). It is the epitome of culture with which we ought to concern ourselves, i.e. "the poet" (who is a metonymy for the Artist par excellence). Richards' point is that the poetry of genius is the epitome of experience (from which culture follows). Poets, in his view, are better experiencers, so to speak, than the rest of us, so we should endeavor to be more like them. I admit that this view is shockingly grandiose and strongly suggestive of displaced religious sentiment (e.g. "be like Christ"), but I find it refreshing and stimulating despite its superlatives. These sentiments were the foundation on which academic English was originally constructed, until French structuralist theories "deconstructed" the edifice of humanism and gave us postmodernism. I personally see more cutting edge potential in a return to the old school humanism of our grandfathers than in the tedious identity politics of "cultural studies" and "postcolonialism."

Hulme referred to Romanticism as "spilt religion." But Richards, Leavis, et al. weren't so far off the mark. Pejorative implications aside, poetry is in many ways akin to religion. There is an argument to be made here, although I doubt it would be very popular in the secular humanities. For one, the language of poetry and the language of religion have much in common. Most noticably, they both tend to work metaphor in a degree unparalleled by other discourses, and, arguably, they both privilege the emotive dimension of language over its referential or strictly propositional dimension. Where Richards and Leavis might have said they both chiefly concern the complex expression of feeling, a postmodernist might say they both privilege the signifier over the signified: "In the beginning was the Word."

What are we doing when we read poetry, or any serious literature for that matter, and how does it resemble or differ from what we do when we read scripture (assuming that we read it, or that we used to read it)? This isn't a question for everyone, I admit, but you don't have to be religious to look into it. I used to read the Bible as Truth, but now I only read it as literature. Though, I have enormous difficulty stating exactly what this distinction implies, hence my question.

I see reading poetry, and the experience of it as much more reflective upon past experiences, rather than instilling a sense of action/ purpose / direction in life. I think these could be fulfilled better with religion and/or politics. Interestingly, you refer to poetry as using religious language, but politics also does. I'm thinking in particular of communism as manifest in Russia, which employed a religious language to poitical ends.

[Theunderground]

The quran i have read in its original arabic and it makes dante and Milton seem lightweight. Still most poetry seems conceptual idolatry and garallousness.

[Ecurb]

Garrulousness? I would think poetry would be the opposite of garrulous -- succinct and to the point. I'll grant that I've never read the quran in the original arabic, though, so I might be wrong.

"One can't
have it

both ways
and both

ways is
the only

way I
want it."
— A.R. Ammons

[Cunninglinguist]

The quran i have read in its original arabic and it makes dante and Milton seem lightweight. Still most poetry seems conceptual idolatry and garallousness.

Paradise Lost was an attack on idolatry. Also certain parts of the Comedy can be construed as endorsing an allegorical understanding of the Bible. I can believe that the Koran, just as the Bible, is arguably a deeper piece of literature than both (still, Paradise Lost was written as an intentional challenge to the Bible, and I would place it above) - notwithstanding, Blake is still a kindergartner, and, when compared to these religious texts, even more lightweight.

[Theunderground]

I open to new things,if anybody can show me a profound poem by a poet i will gladly have a read.
As it is im not impressed by any epics or sonnets. (though to think again,Heine has some great little flighty poems.)
Now shakespeares' Hamlet? A more profound piece of literature i have never come across in my life,nor anything close.

[MessyRoom]

W.H. Auden, one of the greatest poets of the century just past, wrote the gorgeous elegy "In Memory of W.B. Yeats"published a year after Yeats's death in January, 1939.

A fragment of a line in that poem reads:
"For poetry makes nothing happen. . ."

I read that line twice yesterday: in the morning when I was looking for models of elegies and later yesterday afternoon in an article on Slate.com. (By the bye, the author of the Slate article misattributed the line to Ezra Pound.)

Anyway, I wonder if our brilliant LitNetters might discuss their thoughts on of Auden's poetic statement.

Do you think poetry matters at all? Does it matter to anyone other than people who think they write poetry or actual readers of poetry, the number of the latter alas considerably smaller than the latter.

Why do so few people read poetry today?

Does poetry make anything at all "happen"? If so, what happens. Why? How?

I'm eagerly anticipating a multitude of replies.

Auntie

Poetry, if the reader understands it, provides a new way of looking at a subject. It doesn't make something happen. It reveals a new perspective on a subject that influences a person into creating a change in his/her life.

[Ecurb]

You were silly like us; your gift survived it all:
The parish of rich women, physical decay,
Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,
For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.

According to Auden, poetry is “a way of happening, a mouth”. Prose can be translated or paraphrased, because the meaning is in the conventional meanings of the words and sentences. Poetry cannot be paraphrased. Once, Robert Frost was flirting with a young girl over dinner. “I like your new poem, Mr. Frost,” she gushed. “But what does it mean?”

“Do you want me to say it over again in worser English,” snarled Frost.

But of course poetry does make things happen. Although the weather and madness of Ireland may not be subject to its spells, when someone writes a poem he creates something new – a pattern of words upon the previously blank page or a pattern of sound waves in previously still air. Surely that’s “something”.

As I said earlier, perhaps Auden was referring to the conscious effort of Yeats and other Modern Poets to be the new prophets of a post-religious age. That didn’t happen. But just because what was MEANT to happened failed to happen, we cannot assume that “nothing” happened.

[Paulclem]

Y


But of course poetry does make things happen. Although the weather and madness of Ireland may not be subject to its spells, when someone writes a poem he creates something new – a pattern of words upon the previously blank page or a pattern of sound waves in previously still air. Surely that’s “something”.


I doubt if that was what was meant by the OP. It's like saying today causes tomorrow. I interpreted it to mean in an external sense -on top of what it does to those of us who read poetry.

I think poetry might serve a particular emotional purpose - which makes it different to the purposes of reading novels. It's more like listening to music but with words and ideas re-examined or subjects framed in a new perspectve.

[Ecurb]

I doubt if that was what was meant by the OP. It's like saying today causes tomorrow. I interpreted it to mean in an external sense -on top of what it does to those of us who read poetry.

I think poetry might serve a particular emotional purpose - which makes it different to the purposes of reading novels. It's more like listening to music but with words and ideas re-examined or subjects framed in a new perspectve.

Of course that's not what Auden meant -- that's why I quoted the whole stanza of the poem to clarify his meaning. "Ireland has her madness and her weather still." So Auden is saying that poetry is not a magical incantation that can make physical events happen. It can't change the weather ("Rain, rain go away, come again some other day" doesn't work). I was just pointing out that there are other ways (some psychological, but others, which I mentioned, merely prosaic and physical) in which poetry clearly does make things happen.

[Paulclem]

Of course that's not what Auden meant -- that's why I quoted the whole stanza of the poem to clarify his meaning. "Ireland has her madness and her weather still." So Auden is saying that poetry is not a magical incantation that can make physical events happen. It can't change the weather ("Rain, rain go away, come again some other day" doesn't work). I was just pointing out that there are other ways (some psychological, but others, which I mentioned, merely prosaic and physical) in which poetry clearly does make things happen.

I see. You mean that despite the failure to achieve the original purpose, there were cultural repecussions that occurred because of the attempt?

[Cunninglinguist]

Now shakespeares' Hamlet? A more profound piece of literature i have never come across in my life,nor anything close.

Well, in that, many of us are the same.


Poetry, if the reader understands it, provides a new way of looking at a subject. It doesn't make something happen. It reveals a new perspective on a subject that influences a person into creating a change in his/her life.

Is not an "influence" a happening? Then, since poetry influences us, it makes something happen.

[Ezekiel 4:9]

On a coherence theory, at any rate, politics is bad poetry, and so it religion in many respects.

[MorpheusSandman]

I open to new things,if anybody can show me a profound poem by a poet i will gladly have a read.Profound in what sense? I think if you're looking for the same kind of philosophical or religious profundity that you gain from philosophical or religious texts then you're after the wrong kind of profundity. Not that great thought can't be expressed in poetry, but rather I find poetry's at it's most profound when it's capturing those small moments that tend to escape the grandest prose, plays, and religious texts. I've read Lycidas at least 100 times, and I still find myself tearing up at the end. I still don't know why, either. The aesthetic, intellectual, sensuous, emotional odyssey it takes me on in such a short span (really, little more than a few songs' length if you're reading at a normal pace) is simply extraordinary. If that's not profundity, I don't know what is.

[Theunderground]

I mean profound in the sense that it 'moves' me,not in an intellectual or necessarily philosophical sense but emotionally. Hamlet being the perfect example. I find that i very rarely get this from 'normal' poetry but more often in plays and prose. (eg notes from the underground.)

[MorpheusSandman]

Then I guess it's really just a personal thing. Very little art moves me deeply, but I can name works in all mediums that have for a variety of different reasons. I might say that, in general, plays, prose, films,--narratives and fiction in general--moves me more frequently than non-narrative/fictional work does, including painting, photography, and poetry. Yet I turn to the latter because they also offer things that I don't get from the vast majority of fictional art. As I said, I think poetry is better at capturing the beauty, feeling, aesthetics of small moments and more abstract experiences of life when compared to fiction. Even Shakespeare, whom is far-and-away my favorite writer that I idolize, I think more of as a writer of fiction than as a poet, mainly because most of his "poetry" is serving a larger purpose in the realm of his plays' fictions. The pleasures that Milton offers in his short, non-narrative works can't be found in Shakespeare's plays, and vice versa. In the realm of film, I wouldn't want to be without the "poetry" of Stan Brakhage or the supreme narrative craftsmanship of Hitchcock. That's why I think poetry and the fictional arts compliment each other so well.

[Ezekiel 4:9]

People, this forum is a waste of everyone's time. No one is interested in what anyone else has to say. Literature networks are very much like graduate seminars in which students try to impress their peers rather than converse with them. The study of literature is essentially a solitary activity, which explains why people instinctually regard others' insight as an annoying intrusion. Now be annoying and disagree with me!

[JCamilo]

Nope, you did waste my time quite well.

[Buh4Bee]

I'll be polite not waste anyone's time by digressing from the OP's question, "Does poetry make anything happen?" Yes, poetry makes things happen. I know because poetry makes things happen in my life. I read it, think about it, understand it, and share it. This is the lighter side of poetry. But does poetry, do something bigger, like move humanity toward finding world peace? I know it does, because it helps shape thought and philosophy from an emotional vantage point. Isn't deep-seeded knowledge our greatest tool when we seek a positive place of advantage?

[tailor STATELY]

Wikipedia - Humanities:
The humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural science.

"Does Poetry Make Anything Happen?"

IMHO:
Poetry, as all literature does, evolves. Poetry pushes, prods, and kneads language linguistically, phonemically, and artistically in the present sense.

Poetry is evocative (from thefreedictionary.com: (adjective); expressive, moving, striking, revealing, pointed, pregnant, vivid, meaningful, poignant, eloquent, indicative, suggestive.

The study of poetry can fire the imagination to times past unlike an history book can; and allow one to explore other realities, or sensibilities.

IMHO.

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor STATELY

[The Ol' Man]

People, this forum is a waste of everyone's time. No one is interested in what anyone else has to say. Literature networks are very much like graduate seminars in which students try to impress their peers rather than converse with them. The study of literature is essentially a solitary activity, which explains why people instinctually regard others' insight as an annoying intrusion. Now be annoying and disagree with me!

True enough. I've been posting on this forum since October and I've never
been recipient to one response, the discussion simply floats up over my posts
indifferently. Taxing as that can be when a participant, that manner of posting
is fairly enlightening (sometimes) when an observer.

In response to the question posed: 'Does poetry make anything happen?'

Yes, it does. But nor is Auden incorrect.

[chipper]

i think poetry makes "something" happen but not anything

[AuntShecky]

People, this forum is a waste of everyone's time. No one is interested in what anyone else has to say. Literature networks are very much like graduate seminars in which students try to impress their peers rather than converse with them. The study of literature is essentially a solitary activity, which explains why people instinctually regard others' insight as an annoying intrusion. Now be annoying and disagree with me!

Well, there are only three things one can do with books-- read them, talk about them, or, as the original Ezekiel did, eat them!

[Paulclem]

Well, there are only three things one can do with books-- read them, talk about them, or, as the original Ezekiel did, eat them!

There is a fourth if you are bereft of a certain paper.

[PSRemeshChandra]

It is like asking whether The Iliad, The Odessey, The Mahabharata and The Ramayana influenced and shaped human minds and caused things happen or not. Poetry do influence people and do cause things to happen in the long run. In fact they mould the national mind and character without which history, the record of happenings, never occure. Poetry is the moving force that makes the human mind kinetic enough to initiate and make things happen. There is no use denying the impact and influence of powerful poetry on human minds forcing him into action by parading before his intellect excellent examples of similar actions happened in the past. Let powerless and weak poems remain there as inert as the minds of those who created them. But we have in lterary history before us to cite thousands of powerful poems in almost all ages and in almost all languages which stormed people and brought about slow and steady strings of incidents culminating in their final attainment of objectives and fulfillment of mission. As a simple example we shall take the example of the poems written by Alexander Pope while living in London.

Being born a Catholic in the Protestant England he and his people were forbidden to live in London city and was liable for paying a double taxation. To combat these social handicaps and also his physical handicaps from a series of diseases, he possed more than the courage of a lion, which reflected well in his poetry, which were actually acrimonious attacks on his society. We now know whether those ill practices and inhuman legislations of the society in his times still stays there or have been forced to be flown to the Thames, and within how many years. Poets, many of them far high-calibred and cunning visionaries than the ordinary statesmen, law makers and petty politicians, are not day dreamers but determined intellectuals who are determined enough to forcefully make things happen and bring about changes. Pointing out more such examples from other cities, countries and ages alone would make this discussion creative.

[Theunderground]

It can and does move peoples emotions. what more do you want from art?

[MarkBastable]

Well, yes, it does, according to a friend of mine who used to swear that a sufficiently grave rendition of 'To His Coy Mistress' would make Eng Lit undergrads sleep with you.

[OrphanPip]

Al Purdy

AT THE QUINTE HOTEL

I am drinking
I am drinking beer with yellow flowers
in underground sunlight
and you can see that I am a sensitive man
And I notice that the bartender is a sensitive man too
so I tell him about his beer
I tell him the beer he draws
is half fart and half yellow horse piss
and all wonderful yellow flowers
But the bartender is not quite
so sensitive as I supposed he was
the way he looks at me now
and does not appreciate my exquisite analogy
Over in one corner two guys
are quietly making love
in the brief prelude to infinity
Opposite them a peculiar fight
enables the drinkers to lay aside
their comic books and watch with interest
as I watch with interest
A wiry little man slugs another guy
then tracks him bleeding into the toilet
and slugs him to the floor again
with ugly red flowers on the tile
three minutes later he roosters over
to the table where his drunk friend sits
with another friend and slugs both
of em ***-over-electric-kettle
so I have to walk around
on my way for a piss
Now I am a sensitive man
so I say to him mildly as hell
"You shouldn'ta knocked over that good beer
with them beautiful flowers in it"
So he says to me "Come on"
So I Come On
like a rabbit with weak kidneys I guess
like a yellow streak charging
on flower power I suppose
& knock the **** outa him & sit on him
(he is a little guy)
and say reprovingly
"Violence will get you nowhere this time chum
Now you take me
I am a sensitive man
and would you believe I write poems?"
But I could see the doubt in his upside down face
in fact in all the faces
"What kind of poems?"
"Flower poems"
"So tell us a poem"
I got off the little guy reluctantly
for he was comfortable
and told them this poem
They crowded around me with tears
in their eyes and wrung my hands feelingly
for my pockets for
it was a heart-warming moment for Literature
and moved by the demonstrable effect
of great Art and the brotherhood of people I remarked
"the poem oughta be worth some beer"
It was a mistake of terminology
for silence came
and it was brought home to me in the tavern
that poems will not really buy beers or flowers
or a goddam thing
and I was sad
for I am a sensitive man.

[Ecurb]

Well, yes, it does, according to a friend of mine who used to swear that a sufficiently grave rendition of 'To His Coy Mistress' would make Eng Lit undergrads sleep with you.

I've been able to recite "To His Coy Mistress" by heart for several decades now, and I can assure you that your friend is lying to you.

[Ecurb]

I've been able to recite "To His Coy Mistress" by heart for several decades now, and I can assure you that your friend is lying to you.

Jane Austen (who shares our birthday,Mark) chips in. Mrs. Bennet is speaking:


"When she (Jane) was only fifteen, there was a gentleman at my brother Gardiner's in town so much in love with her that my sister-in-law was sure he would make her an offer before we came away. But, however, he did not. Perhaps he thought her too young. However, he wrote some verses on her, and very pretty they were."

"And so ended his affection," said Elizabeth impatiently. "There has been many a one, I fancy, overcome in the same way. I wonder who first discovered the efficacy of poetry in driving away love!"

"I have been used to consider poetry as the food of love," said Darcy.

"Of a fine, stout, healthy love it may. Everything nourishes what is strong already. But if it be only a slight, thin sort of inclination, I am convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely away."

Darcy only smiled; and the general pause which ensued made Elizabeth tremble lest her mother should be exposing herself again.

[AuntShecky]

It can and does move peoples emotions. what more do you want from art?

Rather than merely validating "peoples emotions" {sic} as if they were parking tickets, I do want more, for starters:

--invent, reinvent, transform, "charge" language

--stimulate the intellect

--force me to look at the world in an entirely new way

--challenge my prejudices and that of the status quo

[MarkBastable]

I've been able to recite "To His Coy Mistress" by heart for several decades now, and I can assure you that your friend is lying to you.

Well, I tried it a coupla times and it worked for me more often than not.

(This was several birthdays back, admittedly. Also, as you mention it - and besides Austen - Beethoven, Coward, Arthur C Clarke, Kandinsksy, one of the beardy ones in ZZTop and an Abba guy who may or may not have had a beard.)

[Theunderground]

All those items you want from poetry like changing the status quo etc, start from first moving the emotions. Or do you want to change things feeling cold and uninspired?