So I'm Really Stupid About Poetry

[shortstoryfan]

And most writing in general. The other day, I was reading a biography of Louise Glück that said her poems were noted for their "technical precision". This worries me, because Glück is mostly, from what I've seen, a free verse poet. I'm aware that many times, free verse poems have forms that may be just as complex as "received" form poems, but I don't really see Glück as a poet who finds form particularly important. To me, her poems are more based around this idea of her "authoritative" voice, that she is a poet who knows what she is doing or has good taste and because of that, can write good poems.

Basically, the reason this worries me is that I'm always scared I'm missing something very obvious to other readers of poetry, and that my own poems are lacking on certain levels because of my bad reading skills. I'm just not certain of my ability to read work and see its merits.

[YesNo]

And most writing in general. The other day, I was reading a biography of Louise Glück that said her poems were noted for their "technical precision". This worries me, because Glück is mostly, from what I've seen, a free verse poet. I'm aware that many times, free verse poems have forms that may be just as complex as "received" form poems, but I don't really see Glück as a poet who finds form particularly important. To me, her poems are more based around this idea of her "authoritative" voice, that she is a poet who knows what she is doing or has good taste and because of that, can write good poems.

Basically, the reason this worries me is that I'm always scared I'm missing something very obvious to other readers of poetry, and that my own poems are lacking on certain levels because of my bad reading skills. I'm just not certain of my ability to read work and see its merits.

I don't like Gluck's poetry. Here is a sample of it that I just consulted to make sure I recalled correctly the kind of stuff she wrote: http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/Louise-Gluck

I'm just a reader. I have no authority. And I like it like that.

Have you heard the story of the Emperor's New Clothes. I'm sure you have. The reason that story is so popular is because it is so true.

[PSRemeshChandra]

Following the link provided by Yes No, I read Louise Gluck's one poem Celestial Music which did not appeal to me as well, due to lack of true poetical form and charm. I was coming across this author for the first time. Shortstoryfan was not missing something very obvious to other readers when he doubted the relevance of qualifying her poems in her biography as technically precise. But one thing certainly has to be admitted. They are as precise and simple as an engineer's drawing.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

And most writing in general. The other day, I was reading a biography of Louise Glück that said her poems were noted for their "technical precision". This worries me, because Glück is mostly, from what I've seen, a free verse poet. I'm aware that many times, free verse poems have forms that may be just as complex as "received" form poems, but I don't really see Glück as a poet who finds form particularly important. To me, her poems are more based around this idea of her "authoritative" voice, that she is a poet who knows what she is doing or has good taste and because of that, can write good poems.

Basically, the reason this worries me is that I'm always scared I'm missing something very obvious to other readers of poetry, and that my own poems are lacking on certain levels because of my bad reading skills. I'm just not certain of my ability to read work and see its merits.
If you're reading poetry and coming to those conclusions, I wouldn't worry. And, everyone feels that way at some point. Plus, poetry is subjective, and whether or not you like it should be more due to an emotional reaction, not because of the clever technical aspects of the poem. Shakespeare may have written some of the best sonnets ever; that still doesn't mean I like them, which I don't.

Anyways, what does "technical precision" even mean when it comes to free verse?

[shortstoryfan]

Well, I don't think I can decide not to like a poem because it doesn't touch me emotionally. I'm not really looking at it from that angle.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Well, I don't think I can decide not to like a poem because it doesn't touch me emotionally. I'm not really looking at it from that angle.
For me, there's no other angle to look at poetry from, at least primarily.

[OrphanPip]

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

The clever use of language can be just as exhilarating as any cheap emotional thrill. And there is plenty of technical skill that goes into free verse, rhythm still matters, it is not simply cut up prose.

Holy Sonnet X by John Donne

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so ;
For those, whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy picture be,
Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou'rt slave to Fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke ; why swell'st thou then ?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And Death shall be no more ; Death, thou shalt die.

The poem is brilliant, but does it have anything emotional in it, not at all.

[mayneverhave]

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

The clever use of language can be just as exhilarating as any cheap emotional thrill. And there is plenty of technical skill that goes into free verse, rhythm still matters, it is not simply cut up prose.

Cheers; agreed.
Honestly, it's simply a matter of what is most interesting to the reader. Personally, the overly sentimental, "cheap emotional", tugging-on-the-heart-strings-verse is rarely at all interesting to me, just as action-packed films which are designed precisely to be exhilarating are quite the opposite, often very boring to me.

The most interesting poetry tends to be the poetry most open to interpretation, most able to take on a variety of often contradictory readings without negating any one of them.

Take this sonnet by Baudelaire, "Parfum Exotique", which Richard Howard translates as "By Association":

These warm fall nights I breathe, eyes closed, the scent
of your welcoming breasts, and thereupon appears
the coast of maybe Malabar - some paradise
besotted by the sun's monotonous fire;

an idle isle where Nature grants to men
with bodies slim and strong, to women who
meet your eye with amazing willingness,
the rarest trees, the ripest fruit; and then,

guided by your fragrance to enchanted ground,
I glimpse a harbor filled with masts and sails
still troubled by the slow-receding tide,

while the aroma of green tamarinds
dilates my nostrils as it drifts to sea
and mingles in my soul with the sailors' song.

In this poem, the main tension seems to be between the literal naming of an imagined seacoast (in "maybe Malabar", which is a region in Southern India) as "paradise" and numerous suggestions that directly undercut any such description.

The first quartet should immediately prepare the reader for contradictory, "weird" readings. The scent of the lover's body causing a paradisaical scene to "appear" before the lover's closed eyes is an example of synesthesia (which is a mingling of different senses and a common technique of Symbolist poets), and this along with the "warm fall night" suggests that things will be out of place in this poem, and that language used is not going to be primarily mimetic.

It is an "idle isle", "besotted" by a "monotonous" sun (suggesting an eventual boredom and over ripening of the inhabitants) where Nature gives to "slim and strong" bodied men unspoiled fruit just dropping from the trees. The fact that it is an idle island that requires only "slim and strong" men is in itself a weird, and slightly contradictory, phrasing as the slim and strong bodies would presumably be a necessity for, and a consequence of, hard physical activity.

The first sestet (and off topic, it is strange that the spelling check of a Literature Forum reads "sestet" as a spelling mistake) moves us towards the coast, the "enchanted ground", where the speaker sees "masts and sails" at harbor. This "mast and sails" is particularly interesting as it works both as metonymy suggesting entire ships which "troubled by the slow-receding tide" and cannot escape the island, or taken literally as the remains of a ship which has presumably wrecked on the shore.

The strong smell of the tamarind (a tropical African tree that was brought to South Asia an has mainly culinary and medicinal uses) opens the speaker's nostrils and mixes with the "sailor's song" in another peculiar instance of synesthesia. The sailor's song itself is both a suggestion of the joys of being free to sail on the open waves (i.e. to leave the island/paradise), and also for the speaker to return to his artistic work, which is left in doubt by its mingling with the scent of the tamarind.

On one level, the poem can be read as a somewhat simple description of the speaker's desire to sleep with other women. The "paradise" that is evoked by the scent of the speaker's lover is monotonous and idle; it doesn't require work, only monogamy. The speaker longs to leave, sees the variety of other shipwrecked vessels on the shore, but the mixture of the strong scent (both of the lover and of the tamarind) and the song of the sailors leaves any decision up in the air.

However, the mere evocation of the paradise, draped as it is in such imaginative and sensual language, and the poetic effort it takes to create the poem itself, contradicts the notion of idleness, and leaves the main "point" of the poem resting on sand and not rock.

This poem delights not because it teaches a lesson, evokes emotion, or is after some honest or hidden truth, but because it delights in paradox, in saying one thing but suggesting many more.

[JBI]

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

The clever use of language can be just as exhilarating as any cheap emotional thrill. And there is plenty of technical skill that goes into free verse, rhythm still matters, it is not simply cut up prose.

Holy Sonnet X by John Donne

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so ;
For those, whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy picture be,
Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou'rt slave to Fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke ; why swell'st thou then ?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And Death shall be no more ; Death, thou shalt die.

The poem is brilliant, but does it have anything emotional in it, not at all.

Perhaps, but that is a technicality, look at this:

There he is gathering the dolichos !
A day without seeing him ,
Is like three months !
There he is gathering the oxtail-southern-wood !
A day without seeing him ,
Is like three seasons !
There he is gathering the mugwort !
A day without seeing him ,
Is like three years !


Or this one:

I pray you , Mr. Zhong ,
Do not come leaping into my hamlet ;
Do not break my willow trees .
Do I care for them ?
But I fear my parents .
You , O Zhong , are to be loved ,
But the words of my parents ,
Are also to be feared .
I pray you , Mr. Zhong ,
Do not come leaping over my wall ;
Do not break my mulberry trees .
Do I care for them ?
But I fear the words of my brothers .
You , O Zhong , are to be loved ,
But the words of my brothers ,
Are also to be feared .
I pray you , Mr. Zhong ,
Do not come leaping into my garden ;
Do not break my sandal trees .
Do I care for them ?
But I dread the talk of people .
You , O Zhong , are to be loved ,
But the talk of people ,
Is also to be feared .

Conceit is a nice charm, but how much more natural these sound, as do any other number of Greek verses with far more of an emotional punch. Simple, elegant, almost laughable in their rather repetitive simplicity, yet they pack a harder punch - for one simple reason, they do not feel contrived.

I like Donne, but how far can he be stretched - he is interesting, but much of his work seems like a puzzle more than a poem - don't get me wrong, I do not want to gesture to its lack of quality, but it feels like it cannot connect on the same level.

take even something like this from Sappho:

The gleaming stars all about the shining moon
Hide their bright faces, when full-orbed and splendid
In the sky she floats, flooding the shadowed earth
with clear silver light.

(Cox, 1925) source, Wikimedia.

Rhetoric can only take one so far, real subjectivity that resonates seems bound to an illusion, or a reality of the poem's speaker's evocation of what is being said as true, especially on an emotional level. Donne's games cannot create that allusion, and we may delight in a pun like "die the gentler death" or whatever, but in the end, it really takes something else to get the same jolt of verse - or a suspension of one's interior reality for the reality of the poem.

It's something like comparing a rather contrived Handel Aria with something like a Lieberstod, or even something similar like a less contrived aria, like Handel's Lascia ch'io Pianga - both require a sort of technical skill, but one falls short of the other to move the audience - wonder and tears are two different games - both can be difficult, but one ultimately has the deeper core reaction.

A similar example would also be to look at the same poem at different moments - take for instance, The Waste Land - why is section 4 ultimately more effective as poetry than section 5, despite being much shorter, and far more lyrical? Likewise, the more simple Wordsworth seems to be the more powerful - or even by another example, Racine with 2000 well placed words seems to outshine any other playwright with thousands more (except a select few).

The idea of rhetoric for rhetoric's sake only goes so far. I would wager once the novelty from Donne, or even Pope fades, nothing is particularly left.

[MorpheusSandman]

Basically, the reason this worries me is that I'm always scared I'm missing something very obvious to other readers of poetry, and that my own poems are lacking on certain levels because of my bad reading skills. I'm just not certain of my ability to read work and see its merits.Let me tell you a secret about being a "skilled reader" that applies to all artistic mediums and criticism in general: it basically involved people liking or disliking what they experience, and then analyzing the work to fit that experience to the object. They pick it apart piecemeal, and say that this and that element "works" while that and this "doesn't work". Entire aesthetic and theoretical movements are born out of new generations coming along and sharing certain aesthetic tastes, and it usually involves an "out with the old, in the with the new" mentality. But, really, they aren't "reading" any differently than you are. They like what they like, and don't like what they don't like, but the only difference is that they try to explain their tastes through words, theory, and judgment, and we call it criticism.

Now, I love criticism and have practiced it for much of my life, and I even work as a film critic now, but the thing is is that just because a critic says it doesn't make it true. The best criticism is that which either puts in words something you've felt all along, or that which enlightens you to something you had never considered before. If someone said "so-and-so is noted for their technical precision" and that statement doesn't mesh with your experience, then it could be that they "see something you don't", or it could be that they're simply blowing hot air to sound sophisticated. You can't really tell which is which until you read their argument for how so-and-so poet is "technically precise". I read the link to Louise Gluck and I don't see anything that's "technically precise" either. Now, it's possible to be technically precise in free verse, as elements like syntax, rhythm, phonetics, line breaks, etc. can be used to change the sense of the words, but I don't see a particularly notable use of any of these elements in the few pieces I read. They actually seem rather cliched and forgettable. Of course, I know Gluck is a respected poet so it could easily be that these just aren't the best representations of what others see in her.


I would wager once the novelty from Donne, or even Pope fades, nothing is particularly left.You and I seem to be clashing recently, JBI, because I disagreed with almost your entire post. I find Donne much more engaging both intellectually and emotionally than those pieces you posted, and I vastly prefer Handel to Wagner, even if the latter was a better composer of opera. Then again, I think it makes little sense to compare the last two in terms of opera because of the radically different cultural and creative contexts in which they worked. Wagner had the immense advantage of living in a post-Mozart world where music and drama had become much more intricately integrated. The failure of Handelian opera is almost always the result of the libretto rather than his scores, which are frequently riveting and dramatic in their own right.

Anyway, I think it's unfair to reduce Donne down to conceits, puns, and novelities. Donne is not an unemotional poet, he's simply a poet who filtered emotion through intellect. In most art, we access the content emotionally and then appreciate it technically--if such a thing is applicable. With Donne, it's the reverse; engaging his intellectual thought process is the key to feeling the emotion behind it all. Consider the poem posted, Holy Sonnet X, which is full of contradictions and false bravado covering up the fact that Donne IS afraid of death. It's nothing but macho posturing. Yet it's such impressive macho posturing that we overlook the fragility the underscores it. Really, Donne was so much a slave to his emotional whims that it becomes impossible to synthesize his thought into anything that's not paradoxical, from his attitudes towards women and love, to his feelings on death and religion. Donne is probably the greatest poet of rationalization, and if emotion is to be felt, it's in the places where his reason cracks and we realize that it's covering up something much more primitive and humane. I also think his intellectual approach helps to make something like A Hymn to God The Father profoundly moving:

WILT Thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin, through which I run,
And do run still, though still I do deplore?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
For I have more.

Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I have won
Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year or two, but wallowed in a score?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
For I have more.

I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore ;
But swear by Thyself, that at my death Thy Son
Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore ;
And having done that, Thou hast done ;
I fear no more.

Donne loved punning on his name, but I don't think he ever did it more movingly than here. To say that there's nothing left in this piece once the punning novelty wears off seems absurd to me. My eyes tear up every time I read this, which isn't something I could say about most romantic poets.

[JBI]

IT's contrived. It is all rhetoric and no pathos. Where is the Pathos? The fact that you are so preoccupied with the Pun on his name does not particularly bring me to the emotional level something like Spenser's Epithalamium does. Simply put, Donne is not the most passionate of poets - he is more a trickster. Prone to taking a weird psuedo-philosophical argument like Neo-Platonism, and running with it. Or to be making rhetorical gags at the expense of a poorly aging Elizabeth I. Simply put, he is a great wit, but a rather mediocre philosopher. He has rhetoric down, but no real emotional connection. He is as heartfelt as Jack and Gill Went Up The Hill.

And do not get me wrong, I like the poet, but one always feels that there is something missing, which is part of the game, seeing a sort of horny insecurity behind the smug conceited, "learned" demeanor. That's why so much is played on his sexuality within the poems, since that is the only bit of them that really can be read as something besides an exercise in rhetoric.

[MorpheusSandman]

The pathos is in his voice of regret and fear, which echoes all the more in the repetitions, the same way he felt he continued to repeat his sins, which would cause him to "perish on the shore". Donne is pleading with God here to save him from himself, and only then can He ever him. I'M not preoccupied with Donne punning on his own name, what I said was that this is definitely one of the examples where his name-punning is more than just superficial wit, because it allows it to be read on two substantial levels, both emotional: God has finished, God has Donne. If you aren't finding emotion and pathos in this, then it's purely your problem, not Donne's. In fact, I'd say the same is true about the majority of Donne's poetry.

Indeed, if Donne wasn't passionate and wasn't emotional, then I find it rather amazing that myself (and others) could react with both passion and emotion towards him. Actually, I could understand, if not agree with, the charge of Donne lacking emotion, but lacking passion? Donne is passionate even when he's at his most argumentatively sophistic and ridiculous. Yes, Donne took conceits and ran with them, but that alone shows a certain passion, like a child obsessed with a new toy; there's always a level of excitement at the newness, at the discovery. Call it impulsiveness, if you will, but I don't think you have impulsiveness without passion and emotion. Intellectualism and pseudo-philosophical concepts don't engender that kind of impulse, but emotion and feeling does. Donne's rhetoric, his intellectualism, his conceits, were all the ways in which he tried to understand and express those impulses, emotions, and passions. Donne may be an inauthentic trickster or even an actor playing apart--most of the reports of him as a preacher indicate that he very much was--but I merely think that's the manner that he dresses up and hides behind feelings and passions that are genuine and deeply felt. As TS Eliot said, thought transformed emotion for Donne, but I don't think it removed the emotion so much as it covered over it. It's still there, and I think it's felt all the more powerfully precisely because it's indirect, wrapped up in language and rhetoric that you have to engage with intellectually first.

I also don't get how you're using "contrived", because all art is contrived in one respect or another. You seem to be favoring the kind of contrivance that the reader is less aware of, when I don't know why this would be automatically preferable, or why it says more about the work/writer than the reader. I actually felt less aware of Donne's contrivances than the majority of poetry I read, perhaps because much of it has the feel of Donne discovering and following a thought. Rhetoric isn't something that comes unnaturally to Donne, and I usually get the sense that his conceits were rather spur of the moments rather than devices he endlessly poured over and shined and polished like, say, Milton. Even at his most lavish I still get more of a sense of a mind thinking in the moment, being driven by a passion for something (usually something that's never explicitly stated since it gets wrapped up in other modes), more than I get the sense that it's the work of a self-conscious craftsman. If Donne was that contrived I don't think he would've been so inconsistent in his thought and perspective, or even have overlooked the paradoxes and oversights in his own pieces. Those kinds of flaws are usually indicative of art created in the moment rather than thoroughly contrived.

[stlukesguild]

It is an intriguing argument, JBI. You argue in favor of the strength of the simple and the heartfelt as opposed to the contrived or the overwrought... even though (and I wonder if this irony escaped you) you most certainly fall within the latter. Well versed as you are in the Manichean complexities of academic discourse and rhetoric, how do you see your own efforts as a writer? If JBI were a poet, where would he fall in this dichotomy?

Personally, I can see validity to both sides of the spectrum. I like Donne and the knotty verse of Mallarme (although I suspect that he is attempting something more than obscurity or complexity for its own sake... rather he is aiming at an impression of the inexpressible). I also (as is well known here) love the games of J.L. Borges. Yet I agree... there is something to be said for simplicity and the heart-felt. I do agree as to the strength of Spenser's Epithalimion... and the whole of his sonnet cycle leading up to that penultimate poem... a cycle rooted not in some idealized courtly love idol... or even a mere invention... but rather a narrative that follows the course of his own wooing of her, who would become his wife. To be honest... even when it comes to wit and surface I much prefer the simplicity of Robert Herrick or early Verlaine to Donne's puzzles... although like yourself, I still quite like Donne.

But returning to the original question: is an emotional engagement the sole or strongest measure by which we might judge poetry? After having read Ulysses, I had to acknowledge the brilliance of Joyce... but his characters and the narrative never engaged me on a level such as Proust's... or even Lewis Carroll's. Pope, Swift (as poet) and a number of Roman poets leave me similarly unengaged. Yet at the same time... I have little use for the gushing heart-on the sleeve emotions of the Beats or Sylvia Plath. I don't know that I could isolate a single element or manner of working that would assure that a poem or poet works or doesn't work for me. It seems more complex than that... something that can only be judged on a one-to-one experience.

[JBI]

No, it has nothing particularly to do with complexity, but more to do with the dichotomy between art and fancy, as Coleridge saw it (though oft a rather fanciful poet). Eliot wrote of Donne's strength for the exact reasons I write of his limitations, mainly, the tradition before him had the language of expression, but exhausted it so that it all became form (his contemporary Cavalier and Metaphysical poets followed the same suit) - the problem is with the notion of how much is gimmick, and how much is real. Donne to me seems to much of a show man, and not enough of an artist.

Though I will say, some of his poems connect with me, I do not see him ever of even coming close to achieving a close connection with a reader the way Virgil can, or Shakespeare can, for the simple fact that he is more preoccupied with rhetoric than anything else to my ear.

The question of sincerity is not what I am getting at, most good poets tend to appear sincere when they aren't, but the idea of expressing something that engages the reader on a closer level, that leaves one saying "he or she expressed what I felt, or the world comes alive in these colours." something like that is more enjoyable than a good wit to my ear, the same way I do not think anyone really reads Ben Jonson anymore the way he used to be.

As for poets I do not think complex or not - Sappho, for instance, is very complex to my ear, but there is a sort of appeal to thinking of the experience as authentic, and also a more sensual reaction to the poetics, than with Donne who has absolutely no sensual imagination (the closest he comes is a conceit of his wife crying and flooding the world, but it does not have the weight of Dawn's Rosy Fingers). He is preoccupied with too much of a grotesque game, painting the hideous portrait of a senile Elizabeth, or joking about women for the sake of the jokes - even the Holy Sonnets maintain the same sexual energy which is why I think he is still a great poet, but the religious workings are not particularly potent - compared to someone like George Herbert, or even the obscurer Smart.

[OrphanPip]

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

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

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

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

[JBI]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Petrarch's Love]

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

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

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

[shortstoryfan]

So, umm, about that Louise Glück....

[JBI]

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

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

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

[MorpheusSandman]

Donne to me seems to much of a show man, and not enough of an artist.Same thing has been said of Fellini, and I frankly dismissed that criticism of him the first time I read it as well.


I do not see him ever of even coming close to achieving a close connection with a reader the way Virgil can, or Shakespeare can, for the simple fact that he is more preoccupied with rhetoric than anything else to my ear... The question of sincerity is not what I am getting at, most good poets tend to appear sincere when they aren't, but the idea of expressing something that engages the reader on a closer level, that leaves one saying "he or she expressed what I felt, or the world comes alive in these colours." something like that is more enjoyable than a good wit to my ear, the same way I do not think anyone really reads Ben Jonson anymore the way he used to be. Perhaps YOU do not see him ever coming close to that kind of connection, JBI, but how do you ignore the fact that he has connected with many readers like that? Do you think all of his fans both classic and modern simply looked at his work as witty, rhetorical puzzles with nothing in them that spoke to them on a deeper level? You speak of reading Donne and finding something lacking, yet ever since reading Donne I've sadly found something lacking in most other poetry; what Donne accomplished I haven't seen accomplished anywhere else. No poet embodied the sensuousness of thought like Donne, the excitement of discovering what the mind could do. Yet it seems that kind of sensuous approach to intellectualism is alien to so many, perhaps yourself included, which is why you see Donne is just a wit concerned with rhetoric and puzzles, while I see him as an artist who filtered the wonders of life through the wonders of thought. That element of "him expressing what I've felt" comes through for me in Donne, and I'm not even concerned with religion or sexuality remotely to the extent Donne was. Yet, it's not even that element I connect to, but rather the vitality with which Donne expresses and explores his themes through though. I identify in Donne something closer to the way I see, feel, experience my own mind working. With most artists the identification comes from saying "this is what I feel" or "this is what I think", while with Donne identification comes from saying "this is what I feel when I think".

[MorpheusSandman]

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


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

[JBI]

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

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

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

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

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

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

His audacity is charming, his nastiness, seduction.

[Paulclem]

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

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

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

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

[MorpheusSandman]

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

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

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

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

[Petrarch's Love]

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

[Petrarch's Love]

So, umm, about that Louise Glück....

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

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

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

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

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

[MorpheusSandman]

I would tend to guess that it is this very quality in Donne's work--the assumption on his part that the women he addresses, whether the quasi-fictional objects of his love in his early works, or the patronesses of many of his later works--are perfectly reasonable and intelligent beings capable of following his clever conceits, that has long attracted women to his poetry.I also think this is a strong possibility, and it was one advanced by another critic who talked about Donne's intellectual relationship with Anne Moore, with whom he revealed in a letter the joys of sharing his life with someone he felt was his equal (of course, he said it much more elegantly and discretely). One gets the sense that much of his work around that time could almost be his attempt at impressing her.


In terms of your original post, I'm fairly well read when it comes to poetry (I teach the subject at the college level) but not familiar enough with Louise Gluck's work, or impressed enough with what little I've looked at in the link provided from this thread (which I found fairly uninteresting at first read) to be able to give you any especially good insights into the appeal of her work. Funny thing about Gluck... I'd remember hearing her name somewhere and when I was flipping through my books the other day I came across Penguin's 100 Greatest Poets of the English Language (http://www.amazon.com/Great-English-Language-Penguin-Academics/dp/0321198670/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1303809838&sr=8-1) that had included her, along with Wendy Cope and Kay Ryan, as the three most recently born significant poets. IIRC, the poems selected in that Anthology were better than the ones I read of hers online.

[doowoop]

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