The Imagist

[miyako73]

I do not ask what brush or stroke painters use
Or what kind of paint or colors their palettes have,
Nor do I ask the length of their canvases;
... Formalists are dead.

[MorpheusSandman]

The key word in that poem is the "I" that begins it, because the last line is a falsity (either that, or poets like AE Stallings and critics like Helen Vendler are figments of my imagination... which wouldn't be so bad, come to think of it!). Speaking a bit philosophically, all art is formal expression. To kill form is to kill art. Being ignorant of form isn't the same as form not existing or being dead.

[miyako73]

Have you read any book by Helen Vendler? Was it peppered with classical poetic terms from page to page? Do you know some critics and writers consider Vendler more of a Moralist (as opposed to amoral aesthete or ideologue) than a Formalist? Do you also know that close reading or new criticism that looks at texts as artifacts or aesthetic objects is not the formalism of the ancient? Vendler is not as gung-ho as you two when it comes to anapestic or iambic meter. Read some of her books. You will actually learn terms like "key word" and "couplet ties" and "algebraic".

Of course any kind of art is a formal expression. A violinist has to have a violin to play a Mozart. A poet has to jot down his thoughts on a paper. A ballet dancer has to wear a tutu. That's my idea of formalism- materialist. If your kind of formalism is based on conventional rules being the foundation of an art form, I don't think you are correct. Tribal arts based on meanings and narrative contents have existed among cultural groups since the time of their ancestors. Graffiti is an art; Basquiat proved that. Did he follow any formal rules?

[MorpheusSandman]

Have you read any book by Helen Vendler? -- Yes. To date I've read Poets, Poets, Poetry, The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets, The Odes of John Keats, Emily Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentary, Our Secret Discipline: Yeats and Lyric Form, and Wallace Stevens: Words Chosen Out of Desire

Was it peppered with classical poetic terms from page to page? -- It somewhat depends on what you're defining as "classical poetic terms" but, some of them, yes. Her Shakespeare book certainly was.

Do you know some critics and writers consider Vendler more of a Moralist than a Formalist? -- Who?

Do you also know that close reading or new criticism that looks at texts as artifacts or aesthetic objects is not the formalism of the ancient? -- So? New Criticism still focused on form. Why do you think Brooks titled his book "The Well-Wrought Urn" where he vigorously argued against paraphrasing content in favor of understanding how form manipulates our understanding of content? Granted, he focused on things beside meter as well, such as the development of motifs and symbols, but that's still form.

Vendler is not as gung-ho as you two when it comes to anapestic or iambic meter. You will actually learn terms like "key word" and "couplet ties" and "algebraic". -- I admit she doesn't discuss meter much, but not because she's not "gung-ho" on it. She says explicitly in her book on Shakespeare that she doesn't discuss meter because she feels there is no complete system of rhythm that takes syntax into account as well. She actually recommends Shakespeare's Metrical Art by George T. Wright as being an excellent book on the subject, but her focus is simply different. "Key words" and "couplet ties" are formal terms, related to how Shakespeare developed a word over the course of a sonnet. Again, it's a formal feature of his sonnets. And Vendler uses terms like quatrain, couplet, octet, sestet, structure, chiasmus, etc. repeatedly, which are all formal terms as well.


If your kind of formalism is based on conventional rules being the foundation of an art form, I don't think you are correct.It depends on what you mean by "conventional rules". So far, all I've seen you label as "conventional rules" are meter and closed-forms, and if you had actually read my critique of your last poem (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1137855&postcount=6) you may notice I didn't mention either. What I did mention was the somewhat illogical usage of one image and the opening which seemed merely to give necessary background information without connecting meaningfully with what came after it. That's rooted in the nature of motifs, which is something all artists in every culture I'm aware of utilizes. Repetition and variations is one of those universal aspects of art.

Even if we're just discussing meter and closed forms, you can pretend these things are conventional, classical, dead, archaic, passe, etc. all you want, but there are still a great many modern poets that write metrical poetry and utilize forms, and if you strike up a list of the best poets of the 20th century (meaning, poetry after the modernist/free-verse revolution), most of them wrote in meter and closed forms much of the time too. You can barely read through an entire issue of Poetry Magazine or American Poetry Review without at least ONE formal poem; here's one (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/243344) from Stallings, who's won both the Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellowship. I guess someone out there must appreciate such "archaic" and "passe" writing.

[miyako73]

Here's one by Perloff.

"Indeed, most assistant professors hired at even the top institutions like my own no longer have the slightest idea what literary analysis might entail. They've heard of an old-hat technique called "close-reading" -- a technique they know they don't want to use even though they have no idea what it might accomplish. The dirty word "formalism" is associated in their minds with the New Criticism even though the New Critics were not formalists at all but, by and large, moralists. I am always startled, for example, to see journal articles that refer critically to Helen Vendler's "formalism," evidently because Vendler actually looks at the poems she talks about. But Roman Jakobson and Juri Tynyanov, whose emphasis was always on the linguistic base of texts (literary and otherwise) -- their syntax, sound structure, their generic markers and rhetorical forms - would have been amazed to see Vendler's discussions, say, of Seamus Heaney's representations of the Irish Troubles labeled as "formalist." Conversely -- although one would never know it in the contemporary English department - the study of rhetoric -- a central study from Longinus and Horace to the present -- is hardly exclusive to the bad old Englit classrooms of the now despised era of New Criticism. Indeed, in the age of Socrates, as later of Augustus, rhetoric and political study went hand in hand."

Amato/Fleisher Too Pessimistic
Marjorie Perloff
2002-08-17

[PrinceMyshkin]

Honestly, you two: why do you go on about poetry as if it were a branch of entomology instead of focussing on what is original or idiosyncratic or surprising, sad or joyful about this or that poem?

[miyako73]

Thanks, Prince, for the enlightenment.

I'm still waiting for young critics to share their voices. I would rather see what others think about the qualities of a poem than how some dissect a poem and reduce it to archaic poetic quantities in the form of beats, rhyme, syllabic placement, metering, formal length, etc. What makes literature and art relevant is not because of the form but of the content composed by images, meanings, narratives.

[MorpheusSandman]

Here's one by Perloff.

The dirty word "formalism" is associated in their minds with the New Criticism even though the New Critics were not formalists at all but, by and large, moralists... But Roman Jakobson and Juri Tynyanov, whose emphasis was always on the linguistic base of texts... would have been amazed to see Vendler's discussions, say, of Seamus Heaney's representations of the Irish Troubles labeled as "formalist."Two things strike me about this entire quote:

1. All Perloff has demonstrated by mentioning Vendler focused on how Heaney represented Irish troubles (I haven’t read her book on Heaney, btw) is that she isn’t JUST a formalist.

2. Some new critics did seem to have political and moral motivations for their emphasis on close-reading outside of the biographical and historical, but they nonetheless focused on form regardless of their motivations. Brooks even has a section in Urn where he discusses the philosophical implications of his formal readings.

All that quote says to me is that formalism and other forms of criticism (moral, political, philosophical, biographical) aren't mutually exclusive, and that's a point I would've agreed with even before you posted it. I haven't read Vendler's book on Heaney, but one would have to be blind to say she doesn't focus primarily on formal analysis of poems in her Shakespeare, Yeats, Dickinson, Keats, or Stevens books. I assume when Perloff runs down the list of “their syntax, sound structure, their generic markers and rhetorical forms” he’s referring to those things as falling under the label of form, and I have to ponder what it is he’s inhaling if he thinks Vendler DOESN’T analyze these things…


I'm still waiting for young critics to share their voices.I'm 26! I hope that's not considered old! :lol:


reduce it to archaic poetic quantities in the form of beats, rhyme, syllabic placement, metering, formal length, etc.I didn’t do this in my last criticism of one of your poems. But keep beating on this strawman if it makes you feel good, I guess.


What makes literature and art relevant is not because of the form but of the content composed by images, meanings, narratives.When you talk about images and narrative in the abstract you’re talking about form. It’s only when you say a specific image that you’re talking content. But notice how you can never get to content without form itself. And I wonder at how you toss out “meaning” out there as if it’s extricable from form as well, as if HOW you say something doesn’t influence WHAT you mean. You do realize that postmodernism put the emphasis on the signifier (signs) rather than signified (meaning/semantics), right? What’s the meaning of: “When the evening is spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherized upon a table”?

If you could really explicate what kind of criticism you're looking for--meaning, not something as vague as "content composed by images, meanings" etc.--then you may realize that it's impossible to get there without formal considerations. And, again, by form, I don't just mean meter, rhyme, and syllables.

[MorpheusSandman]

why do you go on about poetry as if it were a branch of entomology instead of focussing on what is original or idiosyncratic or surprising, sad or joyful about this or that poem?Perhaps because I feel to really understand why a poem is original or idiosyncratic or surprising, sad or joyful requires studying it as if it were a branch of entomology! Let me put it another way: Anyone can experience a work of art and just react, and maybe they can express that reaction in a fairly simple way. But some do enjoy understanding why they reacted that way, and what it is about art and themselves that causes that reaction. Understanding that dynamic is kinda what criticism is about and, personally, I'll take thoughtful criticism over mere expressions of reactions any day. But, as I often say, I was a critic before I was a poet (if I have the right to really call myself either).

[miyako73]

Being a fan of (New) Formalism, you have close-reading as one of your tools. You missed Perloff's "Formalism". Quotation marks can say a lot, you know.

[MorpheusSandman]

I would like to think close-reading IS my "tool". But there's too many poems posted around here to close-read every one to the extent that Vendler or Ricks or Brooks does, especially when they live with the poems they write about for years (Vendler even stated she had memorized every Shakespeare sonnet!). It's why they write books and I'm writing on a forum. Not every poem merits in-depth close-reading to begin with. Call me when someone has taken to close-reading McGonagall.

I don't know what you think the quote-marks around "Formalism" is supposed to imply. New Critics were formalists, Vendler is a formalist, even if they are other things. What's the point?

[miyako73]

Check who Roman Jakobson and Juri Tynyanov were and find out who the literary or language formalists, among them (Vendler included), were, but you have to read first Vendler's book on Heany to find out if indeed it is a work of a formalist.

[miyako73]

Let's stop this, Morpheus. It's ruining my sex drive. Let's just write poetry. Any comments you have, make it poetic like my last two, which are both parodies.

[MorpheusSandman]

I don't get it... you keep bringing this subject up and then you want to drop it... I don't mind, but what gives? :confused:

[miyako73]

I might overstay my welcome. :( I don't want to become an outcast here. If Formalism dominates in this forum, so be it.

[MorpheusSandman]

You're not going to be an outcast, miyako. Really, Hawk and I are amongst the gentlest of poetry critics you can find online that do more than just say if we like something or not. But we welcome anyone who's willing to be criticized to post their work. You just have have to accept that not everyone is going to see it as you do.

[miyako73]

Did you really think I ran away? Hell no! I just found your incomplete understanding of formalism and new formalism naive and sophomoric. Your criticisms are form-oriented as if content is unimportant.

I'm not here for arguments but for insights. Frankly my dear, your criticisms come out to me as more about you than someone's poem. I usually shut up when I sense nothing worthy of my time.

[miyako73]

""Key words" and "couplet ties" are formal terms, related to how Shakespeare developed a word over the course of a sonnet. Again, it's a formal feature of his sonnets. And Vendler uses terms like quatrain, couplet, octet, sestet, structure, chiasmus, etc. repeatedly, which are all formal terms as well. "

How can I take you seriously with that? "Couplet" is the formal term. "Couplet tie" is Vendler's way of probing ambiguous words, shifting meanings, form-affected contents in a (Shakespearean) sonnet. You said you are a formalist and a fan of Vendler, but what you wrote said otherwise. You seemed clueless in this one. I'm not nitpicking; I'm close-reading.

[MorpheusSandman]

I'm just going to ignore the silly ad hominem.


Your criticisms are form-oriented as if content is unimportant.It's naive and sophomoric to think that form and content are inextricable from each other. Read Brooks: Form is content. Content is meaningless without understanding how form renders it. If all I cared about was referents and signifieds I would only read philosophy or science.


Your criticisms come out to me as more about you than someone's poem. You mentioned Empson in another thread, Empson was influenced by Richards, who made the strong case (that has been taken up valiantly again by Christopher Ricks even in the wake of New Criticism and Postructuralism) that to ignore the relationship between reader and text is foolish. Texts alone can't tell us why we care about them to begin with. Practical Criticism is about discussing a reader's reaction in relationship with a text, and not the text just by itself.

So the fact that my criticisms tell you something about me shouldn't be dismissed. All criticism tells us something about the critic; that's inevitable. Maybe you don't care about your audience and critics, and to that I say: good for you. Not sarcastically, but seriously. Learning that you write poetry for yourself and not to please people like me is an important part in the process. On the other hand, you still choose to post your poems on forums like these. That tells me that, on the one hand, you care enough about criticism to do so, but, on the other hand, you only care about it if you receive your ideal criticism, IE, someone gushing over your poems' brilliance and taking the time to parse every aspect--every image, every possible meaning, etc.. As I said elsewhere, that's something you have to earn by making us care first. The fact that you've failed (relatively) for me is nobody's fault, it's just a fact. Get over it.


"Couplet" is the formal term. "Couplet tie" is Vendler's way of probing ambiguous words, shifting meanings, form-affected contents in a (Shakespearean) sonnet. I keep insisting that form is not limited to fixed forms and you keep ignoring it. A Couplet is a fixed form, any particular couplet is content. Likewise, a couplet tie or key word is innately form, any particular word or couplet tie is content. While there are various theories on the exact dynamic relationship between form and content (see Furniss/Bath), one interpretation is that form is an empty container in which any thing (content) can be poured into as long as it fits. A Couplet is formal because a variety of different words can fit into it in a variety of ways. Likewise, a couplet tie or key word is a form that a variety of words can fit into in a variety of ways. A Shakespearean key word is no different than a refrain except that instead of occurring at one fixed line it can occur anywhere in each quatrain and couplet.

FWIW, the above definition of form is not exactly MY definition as I think the relationship is more fluid and gets confused quickly: Brooks discussed this when talking about diction. But there are some clear distinctions, and something like Key Word being form and any particular Key Word being content is about as straight-forward as it gets.

[miyako73]

It's naive and sophomoric to think that form and content are inextricable from each other. Read Brooks: Form is content. Content is meaningless without understanding how form renders it. If all I cared about was referents and signifieds I would only read philosophy or science.

When did you decide to change your tone? Now that you have seen the light, apply it in your critiques.

Go back to your critique of this Sapphic stanza. You went directly to your conclusion of falsity based on my placement of the formal negation at the end without really probing the content of the adonean line.

You mocked my last line, "Formalists are dead," without really understanding it. Who are the (pure) formalists? Those are the language traditionalists, the structural linguists, the rhetoricians. The Russian and Eastern European pioneers of this school of thought died a long time ago. Tynianov, Jakobson, Bakhtin, Lotman are all dead formalists. Their formalism is what you have been doing in your criticism.

You kept on mentioning Vendler, yet you haven't really followed New Criticism in you style of critiquing. One of the misconceptions about New Criticism is the idea that form is separate from content or form is above content.

When your every reaction to a poem is about metering, rhyming, syllabic counting, you are following the formalism of the Russians and the Czechs. Vendler studies the forms to understand the content and studies the content to understand the form.

You mentioned Empson in another thread, Empson was influenced by Richards, who made the strong case (that has been taken up valiantly again by Christopher Ricks even in the wake of New Criticism and Postructuralism) that to ignore the relationship between reader and text is foolish. Texts alone can't tell us why we care about them to begin with. Practical Criticism is about discussing a reader's reaction in relationship with a text, and not the text just by itself.

Your critiques are not about reader-text relationship or reception theory, but what you have read and what you know. Stick to the poem, for God's sake. Do you want a sample? Here:

"The key word in that poem is the "I" that begins it, because the last line is a falsity (either that, or poets like AE Stallings and critics like Helen Vendler are figments of my imagination... which wouldn't be so bad, come to think of it!)."

That is a classic example of ignorance being bliss. You mocked your own deficiency. Stallings a formalist? There is no flexibility in Formalism but certainty of form.

I think you want to be a New Formalist, a hip name for the literary traditionalist, classical rhetorician, anti-modernist of the 21st century. New formalism, as a literary school of thought, will remain a moribund intellectual group now and in the future because the very foundation of its reactionary endeavor is to go back to the past. It is like the "new environmentalism," in which, instead of embracing the future, environmentalists go back to a savage life, eat weeds, and live in caves.

I read somewhere (and I can't remember the journal) that formalism of a different kind is the future of literary criticism. I think it is the treatment of texts as artifacts with narratives. In this exercise, literary critics become textual archaeologists. That makes sense. Vendler is getting there.

As far as I can remember nobody did key word and couplet tie analyses before the emergence of close-reading. You made couplet tie sound like a standard term or concept in classical literary studies.

I hope after this, you'll get my point: like you, I voraciously read.

Another thing, negative criticisms directed towards my work do not emotionally affect me. I'm as open-minded as a whore, who can listen to any woeful stories of her clients. I'm not averse to criticism. Find a thread where I did the Vagantes way. I'm too shy for that. I wish I could.

What I have been saying is that this forum should have more literary voices. I have no problem if you are a formalist (the Jakobson kind), but if every critique I read disregards content, that's a different story. I speak up when my intellectual growth is being limited.

Prince has been veering us away from our dogmatic ways. The other day, his comment was about subtext and context. Yesterday, he opened our eyes to intertextuality or comparative reading. I think we should give guys like him a space to also lead in some conversations.

Literary criticism is akin to that proverbial story about the blind man and the elephant. Formalism can only lead us to forms. What about context, writer's intent, reader's experience, narrative, sociality, surface, memory, ambiguity, sound-sense, etc.? A poem is indeed the elephant, and its critics are the blind men. They should share what they sense. Maybe they will realize their different interpretations and assessments will lead them to the best, if not certainly correct, literary analysis.

As to form is content and content is form, let's forget it. I don't want to go back as far as Plato just to tell you this rhetoric sounds nice to our hearing, but it does not make sense. It's like saying plate is food and food is plate. Think about it.

[MorpheusSandman]

When did you decide to change your tone? I didn’t. You’re the one that’s been insisting that my comments about form are somehow only about form and aren’t about content as well. If I’m making comments about form, I’m also making a comment about content because the two are inextricably related.


You mocked my last line, "Formalists are dead," without really understanding it. Who are the (pure) formalists? Those are the language traditionalists, the structural linguists, the rhetoricians. The Russian and Eastern European pioneers of this school of thought died a long time ago. Tynianov, Jakobson, Bakhtin, Lotman are all dead formalists. Their formalism is what you have been doing in your criticism.All wrong. All dreadfully, terribly, utterly wrong.

1. I didn’t “mock” your last line, I stated it was a falsity.
2. You didn’t say “pure” formalists, you said formalists. You’re making the No True Scotsman argument here.
3. The Russian formalists, of which you list, are not the only types of formalists in existence; it’s why the adjective “Russian” was put before “formalist.”
4. Even accepting that the original Russian formalists are dead, that hardly means their theories are dead. Terry Eagleton is just one modern critic using their theories.
5. The Russian formalists were hardly unified in thought. In fact, it was opponents of the movement that gave it that title.

Let’s explore 5. just a bit more. When I say the Russian formalists “were hardly unified,” a more accurate statement would be “they aren’t unified at all.” Russian formalism basically runs the gamut from Saussurian structuralism to Barthesian poststructuralism to New Critical Close Reading that doesn’t concern itself with linguistics. So for you to say “their formalism is what I’ve been doing” is humorous because you’d really have to specify WHICH I’m doing. Saying someone is doing “Russian formalist criticism” is incoherent because the term covers many different critical approaches.


When your every reaction to a poem is about metering, rhyming, syllabic counting,It’s not, and it’s a flat-out lie to say that they are.


you are following the formalism of the Russians and the Czechs.Metering, rhyming, and syllable counting has nothing to do with Russian formalism.


Your critiques are not about reader-text relationship or reception theory, but what you have read and what you know.EVERY critique of poetry is about what the reader has read and what they know! How in the world are they supposed to critique something using methods and ideas and ways of reading they don’t know about?


That is a classic example of ignorance being bliss. You mocked your own deficiency.Geez… my comment was entirely limited to the philosophical truthfulness of the final statement. I said nothing about anything else. You cannot encapsulate my entire critical method in that post.


Stallings a formalist? There is no flexibility in Formalism but certainty of form. Again: WHERE do you COME UP with this stuff?


New formalism, as a literary school of thought, will remain a moribund intellectual group now and in the future because the very foundation of its reactionary endeavor is to go back to the past.This just erroneously assumes that there is some clean break between “the past” and “modernism” when the awesome irony is that modernism and postmodernism was built on reconstructing the past. Death of the Author, a very non-formalist idea, came about by analyzing the modernist method of obscuring the author’s voice in favor of reconstructing voices of the past, so they emphasized intertextuality rather than interpersonality. But there are still many people that think the concept is far too limiting, that it doesn’t seem to account for the unique and identifiable voices in art and poetry that very much seem the product of an author rather than just explicit borrowings of previous texts.


You made couplet tie sound like a standard term or concept in classical literary studies.It’s not, but it’s lack of standardization doesn’t say anything about whether it’s a formal term or content term.


I hope after this, you'll get my point: like you, I voraciously read. Good for you. I think you’ve misread somewhere along the way, or mistakenly conflated various schools of thought or distorted those that already exist. If you’re getting your entire concept of “formalism” from “Russian formalism” then it’s no wonder you’re confused.


If every critique I read disregards content, that's a different story.My comment in this thread was completely about content.


Yesterday, he opened our eyes to intertextuality or comparative reading.You’ve voraciously read but you never encountered intertextual reading until you encountered Prince’s comment? How is that possible if you’ve read the Russian formalists?


Formalism can only lead us to forms. What about context, writer's intent, reader's experience, narrative, sociality, surface, memory, ambiguity, sound-sense, etc.?Context: Most formalists were never allergic to discussing context as a way to be informed of what various words and symbols meant in relation to the author and their culture.

Writer’s Intent: Haven’t you, a voracious reader, read Wimstatt and Beardsley’s The Intentional Fallacy?

Reader’s Experience: Reader Response grew out of New Criticism and the two aren’t all that incompatible. Richards synthesized years before either were officially around.

Sociality: Should be left up to historians.

Surface, memory: Don’t know what you mean

Ambiguity: Is a part of how form complicates content.

Sound-sense: Is form. Pope said this much.


As to form is content and content is form… it does not make sense. It's like saying plate is food and food is plate. Think about it.I don’t know what to say except: read Cleanth Brooks’ The Well Wrought Urn. The food/plate example shows an amount of naivety, because it assumes you can lift content out of form like food off a plate and the content will still “taste” the same the way the food will. This is not true. The idea that form is content comes from the truth that there are a billion ways to say the same thing, and yet some ways (form) are more affective than others. In Pope’s words, poetry was: “what oft was thought, but ne’r so well express’d”. The ways in which thoughts are arranged (form) inevitably affects how we react to them. It's why you can tell the same story to two people, and one may take it and make it into a masterpiece novel or screenplay, and the other can barely even re-relate it.

[miyako73]

Ok, Morpheus. I will answer you few lines at a time as I'm playing a lot of poker tourneys this week, and it seems you did not understand what I said and what you wrote. It also seems that you only read popular books and use the Internet as your reference.

Example:

Sound-sense: Is form. Pope said this much.

Pope's poem, "Sound and Sense", has nothing to do with Sound-Sense and performed literature. Read M.W. Edwards and Don Geiger. Their works are about reading and listening. Readers are listeners too. They can sense something from what they read to themselves and hear, and it affects their appreciation, understanding, and criticism of what they read.

First installment: Is Stallings A Formalist?

Read what she wrote in "Crooked Roads Without Improvement:
Some Thoughts on Formal Verse". (http://www.ramblingrose.com/poetry/others/stallings_essay.html)

To her, form is artificial. That is a taboo statement among real formalists. How can the very foundation of a school of thought be artificial to its practitioner? It seems she is actually a formal verse writer not a formalist.

She also said, "I'm not against free verse." She used free verse in “How the Demons were Assimilated & Became Productive Citizens,” which I love. She is indeed flexible, too flexible for a formalist. She even attacked New Formalism.

Flexibility, by the way, is an enemy of formalism. If you have JSTOR, which I have, read Flexibility Versus Formalism by Lise Vogel. Although it's about Formalism in art history and criticism, you will sense how the notion of permanence is related to form and how Formalism was guarded by its early purveyors against flexible practice and interpretation. Yes, this is a 1968 article from Art Journal. Its historicity might interest you.

[hallaig]

Let's stop this, Morpheus. It's ruining my sex drive. Let's just write poetry.

Och, how refreshing.

[miyako73]

I hope you will let me finish answering all your confusions and misreadings before responding and shooting more confused questions and misreadings. I will recommend readings from now on. Since I have been accused of being pretentious, let me pretend and "edify" you.

[miyako73]

Och, how refreshing.

Read what he wrote about me running away.

Here's what he wrote:

"Call the fire
Department
This
Isn’t
Pleasant-

Ville!"

And the saddest thing: he thought he was right. Damnnnnnn! It seems there's no god; idiocy still prevails. I'll be acerbic from now on. My English is better when I refuse to be passive.

[hallaig]

I wasn't being sarky. I agree we should just write poetry. Race you!

[MorpheusSandman]

it seems you did not understand what I said
Read what he wrote about me running away.

Here's what he wrote:I so adore irony... I should really work to use more of it in my own poetry. This is just one delicious example.

I wasn't referring to you in that passage, and it wasn't about running away. Try again, Mr./Mrs. Infallible and Informed Reader.

Another irony alert:

It also seems that you... use the Internet as your reference.

Example... Pope's poem, "Sound and Sense", Pope never wrote a poem called "Sound and Sense". I wondered where you got that from, and then I typed in "Pope sound and sense" on Google and found this (http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/poetry/sound.html), which fails to mention that that piece is an excerpt from An Essay on Criticism. Now, either you used the internet as a reference, or you just coincidentally decided to give that excerpt the same title that an internet search engine churned out!

I'll let you finish your reply and check out your links in the meantime. See, if you recommend me something to read, I'll read it. I've mentioned Brooks to you I don't know how many times and you seem to be ignoring me.

[miyako73]

Ahem! You are now denying that your "A Poem by Logics Cat" is not about me and my poem, "Invisible Pain." My God! If you think your readers are morons, I'm not one of them. Hawk, your "bandwagoner", will really be proud.

Maybe this is how it happened. I mentioned sound-sense in my appreciation and criticism of poetry, you googled it, and voila... Pope's "Sound and Sense" came out, and then you used it as if it was related to performed literature, reader as listener, and interpreting the interpreter.

I did not say anything about sound and sense being poetic themes. I mentioned "sound-sense" as a valuable tool in literary criticism. By the way, the relationship between sound and sense is a theoretical staple among performance theorists. Guess what... poetry reading (reading to a crowd or to one's self) is performance that involves understanding and interpretation of a text.

Also, when a reader reads a poem to himself and hears it, there is already a process of sensing and interpreting going on. What he senses and how he interprets affect his appreciation and criticism of the poem. Pope did not say anything like that in his poem. Leave him alone in his grave.

Second installment: Death of the Author

You Wrote:

"Death of the Author, a very non-formalist idea, came about by analyzing the modernist method of obscuring the author’s voice in favor of reconstructing voices of the past, so they emphasized intertextuality rather than interpersonality. "


Read Barthes' "Death of the Author" (http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/barthes06.htm). Read it twice or even thrice; you might misread it again.

How can it be about reconstructing the past when the past of the book is the author according to Barthes? The digging of the past is done by critics Barthes vilifies in the article.

Death of the Author is about empowering readers, liberalizing interpretation, and letting a language speak.

It's strange that you are trying to resurrect the author with intertextuality, which is about authoring and authorship, influence of text/author on another text/author, orchestrated writing, reading, and referencing.

Denying authors their authorship is a tool in literary criticism. A confessional poem becomes a narrative of just about anyone but not of its author. Readers, in this case, extend the text and refuse to recognize the control of its author. Knowing the author before the text, which is becoming a literary fetish in biographical reading, is thus avoided.

Since you have provoked me, and your provocation is between arrogance and insult, I won't shut up. One thing I hate is when a mosquito thinks his bite is that of a cobra.

[miyako73]

I nearly forgot. You mentioned Pope and wrote this:

"Sound-sense: Is form. Pope said this much."

I guess this one is really saying much about sound and sense in poetry or in literary theory.


Sound and Sense
by Alexander Pope

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.
'Tis not enough no harshness gives offense,
The sound must seem an echo to the sense:
Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,
The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar;
When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,
The line too labors, and the words move slow;
Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain,
Flies o'er the unbending corn, and skims along the main.
Hear how Timotheus' varied lays surprise,
And bid alternate passions fall and rise!

It was you who were misled by what you read Online. Don't blame your folly on me. I did not use Pope as my reference; you did.

[Hawkman]

Sorry my original reply was posted in the wrong thread, but it kind of applies here too.

Really, you should have this debate in the Poems Poets and Poetry thread.

Live and be well - H

[miyako73]

Why don't you say that to your comrade, Morpheus?

This is where we differ-- I don't take myself or your highness seriously, but it's a different story with literature, where I'm as serious as a predator eyeing for a kill.

When provoked by an intellectual bonsai, I can't do anything but nip him in the bud before he grows a foot and thinks he is an intellectual sequoia.

[MorpheusSandman]

Continued here on the advice of Hawkman. (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1139225#post1139225)

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

The poem seems more of a commentary on artistic theory than an actual poem, by which I mean your intent wasn't to write a poem with what you think poetry should do--wich should include, from your own words, miyako, "content composed by images, meanings, narratives"--but to spark a debate on poetic theories. That you immediately pounced when someone commented on the obviousness of your intent by commenting on formalism seems to support me.

[Bewlay Brother]

Why don't you say that to your comrade, Morpheus?

This is where we differ-- I don't take myself or your highness seriously, but it's a different story with literature, where I'm as serious as a predator eyeing for a kill.

When provoked by an intellectual bonsai, I can't do anything but nip him in the bud before he grows a foot and thinks he is an intellectual sequoia.

Morpheus is every bit as much of an intellectual as you are. He has a different opinion. That's all.

And Mutatis-Mutandis is correct.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

When provoked by an intellectual bonsai, I can't do anything but nip him in the bud before he grows a foot and thinks he is an intellectual sequoia.

If you don't like intellectuals, I suggest you leave now and never come back (Smeagol quote!!!).

[Silas Thorne]

So, yes, there's a poem here lost in the discussion:

The Imagist

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I do not ask what brush or stroke painters use
Or what kind of paint or colors their palettes have,
Nor do I ask the length of their canvases;
... Formalists are dead.


I read the 'I' of the poem to be the Imagist in the title. Whether this is the same as the writer is not really important to me, since the poem is entitled 'The Imagist' and this Imagist speaks from his/her opinion. Similarly,whether the 'I' of the poem says that 'Formalists are dead' does not necessarily mean that the poet shares this opinion. The Imagist in the poem seems to regard images as of primary importance in a text, since Formalism refers to a perspective where form is of primary importance in a text. This reader does not have to agree with the 'I's opinion, but I do agree with the presented characters right to present it.

[miyako73]

Bewlay wrote:

Morpheus is every bit as much of an intellectual as you are. He has a different opinion. That's all.



"I am not an intellectual, and I hate obnoxious pseudo-intellectuals."

--Miyako73

[miyako73]

The poem seems more of a commentary on artistic theory than an actual poem, by which I mean your intent wasn't to write a poem with what you think poetry should do--wich should include, from your own words, miyako, "content composed by images, meanings, narratives"--but to spark a debate on poetic theories. That you immediately pounced when someone commented on the obviousness of your intent by commenting on formalism seems to support me.

This is how it started... http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=68931

Morpheus' BS critiquing became apparent to me when he related "eye" to "eve" because y, to him, looked like v. That was too much for my simple brain.

[Catamite]

Surely the poem regardless whether the writer is the narrator or not is nonsensical because form is painting is not about paint is used, akin to ink in writing, but actual styles of painting - abstract or classical, for example, which one does consider. But if I've misunderstood this please correct me.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

This is how it started... http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=68931

Morpheus' BS critiquing became apparent to me when he related "eye" to "eve" because y, to him, looked like v. That was too much for my simple brain.

It doesn't change the reason why you wrote this "poem."

And if it's BS critiquing, ignore it and move on. On top of that, his critique was largely POSITIVE.

I know one thing: I'm not bothering to read the poetry of someone who can't stand someone else's point of view.

[miyako73]

Sorry, Mutatis. I'm done with it. I moved on already. There are other people here who are really into poetry than what they want to BS around or show off.

[qimissung]

R e m i n d e r

Please do not personalise your comments.

If you are not ready to accept the fact that your opinions might be questioned by the others,

please refrain from posting in public forums.

Posts containing such remarks and off-topic posts will be removed without further notice.

[MorpheusSandman]

Morpheus' BS critiquing became apparent to me when he related "eye" to "eve" because y, to him, looked like v.Yes, I got such BS critiquing skills from Helen Vendler who notes how Shakespeare frequently modulated from one word to another based on their visual proximity rather than any linguistic or semantic closeness. So, apparently, you're saying that I BS as much as our greatest living critic of poetry; that warms the cockles of my heart.

A "y" is a "v" with a tail. There is no "to me" about it.

[Bar22do]

What's BS critique? Bar, the foreigner

[MorpheusSandman]

What's BS critique? Bar, the foreigner ahem. (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=BS) I'm oddly delighted there's actually a Wikipedia entry for that word...

[Bar22do]

... and there are so many BS'es there too :confused5: ! so I go for "British Standards" rather than for the card game mentioned there! :wink5: Thanks for your help, Morpheus, always a pleasure to read your stuff, whether poetry or (learned, relevant, always polite) comments.

miyako, I tend to agree with whoever thinks this is more of an expression of opinion on an artistic theory rather than a poem, though you certainly have passion for poetry and art and show talent when you let it express itself freely.