the best thing about poetry is?

[cacian]

For me it has to be the words and words only.The stringing of words to make a sound a musical one is as important as the cascading of words to give a shape to the poem as if it were pottery moulding. Visually pleasing and sound wise very soothing too.
Meanings are secondary for me sorry to say however I do enjoy puns or underlying meanings.

The other point is that I find the word poem rhymes with boheme which leads to think could that be the heart of where poetry came from.

How about you?

[MorpheusSandman]

Would it be too general if I said "form" in all its varieties? For me, poetry exemplifies the fact that art cannot exist without form, and the more formal possibilities there are, the more potential there is for meaningful and aesthetic expression. In great poetry, every formal device is utilized and concentrated towards a point, meaning that sound, rhythm, rhyme, diction, line-breaks, syntax, etc. all come together for some purpose, and when you have that many formal elements concentrating towards an expression, you have the potential to create something lasting and special. Of course, the difficulty of mastering so many formal devices is also why there is an extremely limited amount of good/great poetry written every generation.

[MeLiKeyClaSsIcS]

There's a great amount of ironic freedom when I think about the poetic process. I like free form, but I feel most at home when I'm working with poetic forms. They give me a way to shape my often times muddled and confusing emotions and opinions into concrete (no pun intended) constructs.

[cacian]

Hi Morpheus and thank you for posting.
You mention art not existing without form. Do you mean form as in a message?
Sorry it is not clear.

[hallaig]

The sex and the beer

[cacian]

The sex and the beer

What about wine? haha much spoken of wine in poetry.

[MorpheusSandman]

You mention art not existing without form. Do you mean form as in a message?Message would relate more to content. Form has to do with how a message/theme in poetry is rendered. Exactly what form entails has been one of the major aesthetic debates going back to Plato, but I always liked the simplistic answer that when you're talking about "what" then you're talking about content (what X means, what X characters do, etc.), and when you're talking about "how" (how X means, how X character does that, etc.) then you're talking about form. In poetry, things like line-breaks, rhythm, meter, sound, etc. are all components of form.

[hallaig]

What about wine? haha much spoken of wine in poetry.

Aye quite right!

Come, wet your chest with wine: the dog-star now
Is rising high, the oppressive glow
Of summertime brings thirst to all.
The blazing heat, which withers all things,
is spread everywhere; the blooming thistle
Holds up its head; now womankind bristles
With passion most......

[YesNo]

What I like most about poetry is the sound and the meaning.

One can break the sound into the components of some form, although sound goes beyond formal poetry. Some poetic forms on the other hand don't seem satisfying to me. They just don't sound right in English. Perhaps in some other language they would be OK. A poem is close to something that one could chant if not sing in the language in which it is written.

The meaning of the poem is also important. However, I don't want to read a string of disjointed images or ideas. Such poems often don't have any sound value to fall back on. At some level there is a message.

The sound and the meaning balance each other. If one is weaker, the other compensates to make the poem worth reading.

[ralfyman]

Reading it aloud.

[Scheherazade]

The best thing about poetry is that someone else writes it... And I can be as critical as I can be.

[cacian]

The best thing about poetry is that someone else writes it... And I can be as critical as I can be.

Ah but is the critique good enough for the poem and vice versa? Only saying like:biggrin5:


Reading it aloud.

Indeed a very good point. I personally type out loud meaning I say it as I type it. I could not silently.

[Pierre Menard]

My fave thing about poetry is really just the fascination I have with how language can be used in so many different and interesting ways; the way an entire poem can change in feeling and tone simply by how a line is structured and so on.

Also, I love the beauty of language and words and I'd say poetry is language's greatest practitioner.

[cacian]

I find the spelling of some old poetries quite difficult at time so I feel that is spelling in poetry must keep uptodate with time. A good poem presents itself in a language that is spelled to modern times in order to appeal to all.
For example:

This is from Paradise Lost John Milton:

the mind is in its own place,
and in itself Can make
a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n

Anyone knows why can is spelt with capital C?
and heaven without the E?

[MorpheusSandman]

[/I]
Anyone knows why can is spelt with capital C?
and heaven without the E?Firstly, those lines should read:

The mind is in its own place, and in itself
Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n

"Can" comes at the beginning of the line, and all words at the beginning of lines in pre-Modern poetry are capitalized. The elision of the "e"s is technically known as "syncope," which in linguistics is the elision of one or more syllables in the middle of a word. It indicates that the syllable is not to be pronounced. This was essential to make words fit the meter, but it was also useful in representing something closer to common speech as in, eg, the poetry of Donne or Wordsworth. Syncope was more useful in pre-Modern poetry because certain syllables in certain words were optionally pronounced. EG, words ending in "ed" like "called" could either be pronounced as it is now, or as two syllables, "call-ed". If a poet spelled it "called," it was usually an indication that both syllables were to be pronounced, while with it was spelled "call'd" then it was an indication that it was to be pronounced as one syllable.

[cacian]

MorpheusSandman that is brilliant thank you for the post. Syncope I never heard of but yet I was aware that words are reduced to fit the rhyme or the meter.
I was thinking about the reshaping of words to fit the sound. For example would I be able to spell the word ''called'' into two syllabes like this ''call-ed'' in order for the word or verb to be read in two parts as in call and ed? That means the stress is put on the last syllable to make is sound as if it was pronounced Ed as in the name?
This would then make the verb sound different from the word 'cold'.
If so is there a name for this kind of spelling rearrangement for phonetic purposes?

[MorpheusSandman]

I was thinking about the reshaping of words to fit the sound. For example would I be able to spell the word ''called'' into two syllabes like this ''call-ed'' in order for the word or verb to be read in two parts as in call and ed? That means the stress is put on the last syllable to make is sound as if it was pronounced Ed as in the name?
This would then make the verb sound different from the word 'cold'.
If so is there a name for this kind of spelling rearrangement for phonetic purposes?I'm really lost as to what you're asking here, exactly. Modern English never pronounces the "ed" at the end of words like "called" anymore, so the distinction between "call-ed" (where "ed" is pronounced) and "called" (which is like "cold") is only useful for pre-modern poetry, and explains why such words are sometimes written with the 'e' elided, like "call'd" or "heav'n". "Heaven" is actually the opposite of words like "called" in that we never pronounce it as one syllable in Modern English, always two.