which is better? a poem or a booK?

[cacian]

*a book here representing a story as oppose to a poem.

and does writing a story influences the way we write a poem so that poetry today reads like a short story rather then a poem?



to me poetry reads between the lines although I feel that poetry more and more veers towards short story telling and therefore its aim is rather losing touch. I feel that the more we entertain ourselves with long complex stories and the more we expect the same from poetry. there is a sense of wanting more of the same from it. our minds is more bookish then poetish it seems.

a book however states the obvious.

and so I would rather contribute poetry then stories.

[Lokasenna]

to me poetry reads between the lines although I feel that poetry more and more veer towards short stories and therefore its aim is rather losing touch. I feel that the more we entertain with long complex stories and the more we expect the same of poetry. there is a sense of wanting more of the same from poetry . our minds is more bookish then poetish it seems.
a
book however states the obvious
and so I would rather contribute poetry then stories.

..?

I have literally no idea what any of this means.

[cafolini]

..?

I have literally no idea what any of this means.

Or: I clearly see that it doesn't make any sense.

A master of con-fusion probably thinks that the problem is in certainty, not even suspecting that the certainty is due to con-fusion to begin.

[osho]

At times you are so wise and at others......I do not want to say. Maybe this question was unnecessary or cannot provoke the thoughts you are expecting. Or at least this does not make sense. You might have writing this post in your sleepy state.

[cacian]

At times you are so wise and at others......I do not want to say. Maybe this question was unnecessary or cannot provoke the thoughts you are expecting. Or at least this does not make sense. You might have writing this post in your sleepy state.

I am not sure what you mean by: this question is unnecessary?
I have rewritten the post. I have to admit I do not write when sleepy I am usually in bed by then haha ;)


..?

I have literally no idea what any of this means.

hi Loka. I am asking whether one prefers poetry to books or vice versa?
I am also saying that I think poetry today reads like short story telling and that I feel that was not the primary aim of poetry.
a book however ie a story is predictable because one knows already there is a dilemma/conflict that is about to crash or be solved.
then I move on to explain that I feel that more and more we have gotten used to the idea reading lots of books and studying them too that our minds is bookish rather then poetic. therefore when writing or reading poetry we expect more of the same concept.

[JCamilo]

Cacian, I have a question...

I have a book with many poems. However,due to use, one of the pages got loose, splitting a poem in a half. What should I prefer, the part left in the book or the part in the page?

[cacian]

Cacian, I have a question...

I have a book with many poems. However,due to use, one of the pages got loose, splitting a poem in a half. What should I prefer, the part left in the book or the part in the page?

a book for me means a story. a poem is just a poem. so you have one story ie one book versus one poem. :)
you mean to say one of the pages got ripped. a loose page is just loose and usually comes off a book.
anyway to attempt an answer I would say I prefer neither because the poem is no longer visible.

[stlukesguild]

Cacian... you forget that The Iliad and The Odyssey, The Aeneid, the Canterbury Tales, Dante's Comedia, Paradise Lost, Orlando furioso, Os Lusíadas, La Gerusalemme liberata, The Faerie Queene, Goethe's Faust, Blake's Milton, Byron's Don Juan, Endymion and Hyperion by Keats, The Prelude by Wordsworth, Browning's Ring and the Book, The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel by Nikos Kazantzakis, Neruda's canto General, T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets, The Changing Light at Sandover by James Merrill, Omeros by Derreck Walcott and any number of other works are poems that are also narrative and as long as many novels.

Now I believe there is some merit to your question about the current preference for narrative works... especially long narrative works... over lyric poetry... which quite often is not narrative in nature. While others pointed out that "a book" is not necessarily a novel or long narrative work... a great many others here and elsewhere make similar assumptions. I cannot count how many times I happen upon lists of the "Greatest 10... 25... 50... 100" Books" in which not a single poem, play, or work of non-fiction is included... as if Hamlet, Les Fleurs du mal, or Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire were not books.

So why is poetry less popular today? Children begin reading with poetry (Dr. Seuss, etc...) and Middle-School kids are enthralled by poetry in the form of song lyrics. But our education system is doing much to dissuade reading poetry... and even fiction... and the idiots behind curriculum push more and more for students to spend the majority of their time reading dry non-fiction in the belief that as most careers don't entail the reading of fiction... let alone poetry... we shouldn't be wasting our time teaching such.

[MorpheusSandman]

+1 to what stluke said.

[mona amon]

*a book here representing a story as oppose to a poem.

and does writing a story influences the way we write a poem so that poetry today reads like a short story rather then a poem?



to me poetry reads between the lines although I feel that poetry more and more veers towards short story telling and therefore its aim is rather losing touch. I feel that the more we entertain ourselves with long complex stories and the more we expect the same from poetry. there is a sense of wanting more of the same from it. our minds is more bookish then poetish it seems.

a book however states the obvious.

and so I would rather contribute poetry then stories.

I have to confess that I don't like reading poetry! :blush: I like some poems that I've read, some of them very much, but on the whole poetry just doesn't get my motor running. I think it's a question of training. over the years I've trained myself to read prose and drama well (just by reading a lot), but poetry has a different set of rules and I just haven't bothered with it yet. At first I thought it was the absence of plot, but as you say, some poems do tell a story, and for me that doesn't help. I once mentioned this to someone, and she knows I love Kubla Khan, so she suggested I read Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which has a story. I did, but nope. I just did not get it.

[free]

I like both if they are well written and have communication with me, when they hit the point of my interests. As for the poetry looking more like stories than like poems, it has started with the abolishing of classic poetic form. To me it makes sense as a poem only if the words a poet choses are strong in their expressivity. It seems that it is much more difficult to be a good poet today than it was before.

[cacian]

Cacian... you forget that The Iliad and The Odyssey, The Aeneid, the Canterbury Tales, Dante's Comedia, Paradise Lost, Orlando furioso, Os Lusíadas, La Gerusalemme liberata, The Faerie Queene, Goethe's Faust, Blake's Milton, Byron's Don Juan, Endymion and Hyperion by Keats, The Prelude by Wordsworth, Browning's Ring and the Book, The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel by Nikos Kazantzakis, Neruda's canto General, T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets, The Changing Light at Sandover by James Merrill, Omeros by Derreck Walcott and any number of other works are poems that are also narrative and as long as many novels.

Now I believe there is some merit to your question about the current preference for narrative works... especially long narrative works... over lyric poetry... which quite often is not narrative in nature. While others pointed out that "a book" is not necessarily a novel or long narrative work... a great many others here and elsewhere make similar assumptions. I cannot count how many times I happen upon lists of the "Greatest 10... 25... 50... 100" Books" in which not a single poem, play, or work of non-fiction is included... as if Hamlet, Les Fleurs du mal, or Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire were not books.

So why is poetry less popular today? Children begin reading with poetry (Dr. Seuss, etc...) and Middle-School kids are enthralled by poetry in the form of song lyrics. But our education system is doing much to dissuade reading poetry... and even fiction... and the idiots behind curriculum push more and more for students to spend the majority of their time reading dry non-fiction in the belief that as most careers don't entail the reading of fiction... let alone poetry... we shouldn't be wasting our time teaching such.

true however to poetry a meaning and narrative epic pieces do not do it any justice.
it is one thing to read a story and another to read a poem but it seems that poetry is lacking that fizziness of what a poem really sets out to be.
I feel the neglect of poetry is at the cost of story writing. we are therefore loosing it to long narrative writing.
one difference between a story and a poem is that one is obvious but the other is not.
one never knows what a poem is going to be about whereas a story can more or less predict what it is going to be about.
poetry is spontaneous and unpredictable whereas a story is planned and verified ie one has read similar before.

[mortalterror]

Checking my 80 favorite books it breaks 33 for poetry and 47 for prose. Though I will add that most of my favorite poetry is long and narrative driven rather than short and lyrical.

[JBI]

Western Canonical understanding has a tendency toward placing the value of authors on a general longer form - that means, as Borges has argued, no matter how perfect Keats' odes are, they will never be as esteemed as Don Quixote, despite Quixote's numerous mistakes, awful poetry, and other weak parts.

That is more or less true - we will not, as a general population, put the single lyric above others - we will talk about Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, or whomever, but we generally discuss them as a collection (however edited) rather than as single poems. I suspect if one poet wrote a single perfect poem, and then never wrote again, nobody would pay them any heed.

That being said, this is more or less a Western concoction that overlaps onto some other cultures as well. In general, the West having developed late, has always had a preference for narrative, given that narrative is consumable by a mass population who cannot read. Lyrics too, except that something like Sea Ballads, or Border Ballads do not work as well as lyrics. In general for most of English history the most popular form of literary entertainment was most likely this form of vulgar art, which adores narrative, chorus, and any other tropes we find verbose, or pointless in other forms.

Now with that said, in terms of established art forms, the lyric has been quite dominant. Every single person who was anybody seems to have been writing sonnets or pamphlets in 16th century England. In terms of prose fiction, the only example that comes to mind is The Unfortunate Traveler, and I find that today quite difficult to read (antisemitism and xenophobia aside).

Lyric has always been centered on specific privileged communities. Traditional Odes were mostly written to celebrate things connected to rich people. Pindar praising a chariot race is in essence praising the rich man who owns the best chariot, not the poor slave who drives (chariot racing being the only sport then when the winner didn't even need to participate).

The actual circulation of Renaissance lyrics only adds to this - most were moving in circles of friends and contacts through manuscripts. Thomas Wyatt's They Flee from Me now contains the math homework of someone who had the manuscript after him. Even until the time of Donne, the manuscript was still dominant, with most works still moving between friends on paper, and not into bound books. Narrative, which generally tends to be longer, requires two things. First of all, if it is oral, it requires an audience, which plays a part in changing and adapting the narrative (I am certain that textual Homer, though in essence was the same as Original Homer, was not an exact copy). Secondly, if it is recorded, it requires people to be able to read, and afford a copy. The burning of the library of Alexandria shows how fragile the ancient world's texts were. There are countless other examples floating all the way until the invention of printing. Roman authorities even demonstrated one could actually be totally removed from historical and cultural records by the process of chopping ones face off a sculpture. This same feat was later accomplished in Maoist China, with the famous portrait of the founding of the communist country constantly being changed to add the new favorites into the front row (in 1949 Deng Xiaoping would not have even been invited to the standing room, yet somehow he is sitting front row?).

Print changes things, but up until the mid-19th century, printing was incredibly expensive in England. Pulp did not exist in the sense it does today, and paper was mostly made from used garments. Books, if they were privately owned, would be limited to the rich elite, whereas public books would be restricted to the new reading class, an upper-middle class who could afford copies from the lending libraries (usually requiring subscriptions). Public libraries, mass literacy, female literacy, and popular literature (as written literature) are all relatively late inventions, despite Gutenberg bringing printing centuries before.

Now, all this being said, lyric poetry has always been something relatively private. Elitist poets would have big audiences - of a couple thousand of people. Alexander Pope did not have wide circulation in today's terms, but he was quite simply the embodiment of a colossal poet in his time. Nobody from any lower class would have encountered his work, and his Homer, which was his narrative masterpiece, could not have had much of a circulation.

What is a book then? well, it now is a mass product that can be sold. Before it was a mass work that could be appreciated (Given that it wasn't cheap at all to buy, I use appreciated in the sense of has use, including manuals on medicine etc.). and now is slowly becoming an obsolete form.

Since sales are so important. It does not surprise me that since Wordsworth the dominant form of poetry, both lyric and narrative, has been the anthology as a book. Lyrical Ballads is the first great anthology I can find, in that it has both cohesion as a collection, and with its preface, it also contains a sort of ars poetica built into it. Compared to other important anthologies, such as Tutle's Miscellany which contains much of Wyatt and Surrey, we see there is a complete shift in genre.

This can be said to mark a transition - you cannot sell lyrics one by one. You may get them into magazines if you are lucky, but more often than not, you will not get them into the same publication every time, and it will not generate the money or buzz a collection will. Secondly, it marks a shift in poetry as a casual form (meaning a casual sonnet written, for a girl, or as a poetic exercise) to a collection of works, showcasing an individual poet as personality and style.

In truth much of modern literature has been preoccupied with this - distinctive style. One cannot say that I write in x style a work and then have that criticized or reviewed as a specific concoction in this mode. We like to think of poets now as independently grouped, so that the single work in one style is not even possible anymore. I have the feeling that similar-styled poets were considered fine poets back in the Renaissance, and the place of the single poet alone, misunderstood, and distinct is a completely modern conjecture.

We now place emphasis on the book of poetry more than all, reading something like four quartets as a collection, instead of one section of one poem at a time - Eliot surely had this in mind when he wrote it. We cannot speak of one poem from Harmonium, we need to discuss the collection. This is the dominance of the book over poetry.

Other cultures are different, but even they show signs of the book taking form. Japan is relatively unique in that the poet did not seem, from my understanding to be in the centre, but the poem. Anthologies were grouped by theme and topic. Later China would group anthologies by genre (meaning prosodic category), yet the fat collected works and personal anthology would remain dominant. Still, it is no surprise that narrative works end up taking off by the Yuan, and though a few lyrical poets reach great acclaim in the later years (particularly the early Qing), the vast majority of canonical works from the period are in prose (usually classical prose, though sometimes vernacular).

So perhaps the dominance of the book over the poem is in a sense a development of the means of production. Certainly a single poem cannot sell a million copies.

[MorpheusSandman]

Good post, JBI, and I agree on most everything but:


I suspect if one poet wrote a single perfect poem, and then never wrote again, nobody would pay them any heed.Thomas Gray's Elegy in a Country Churchyard? He may have wrote again, but never produced anything as remotely as critically heralded as that.

[JBI]

Good post, JBI, and I agree on most everything but:

Thomas Gray's Elegy in a Country Churchyard? He may have wrote again, but never produced anything as remotely as critically heralded as that.
That's a long-length poem. I was talking more of poems unable to be printed on anything more than one or two pieces of paper.

[MorpheusSandman]

Fair point.

[cacian]

That's a long-length poem. I was talking more of poems unable to be printed on anything more than one or two pieces of paper.

that is the whole of poetry in that it does not need baggage. ie poetry is fast learning and requires hardly any paper thus making the most sufficient. it is economical. books however require a lot of work paper wise it is very consuming.

[JBI]

that is the whole of poetry in that it does not need baggage. ie poetry is fast learning and requires hardly any paper thus making the most sufficient. it is economical. books however require a lot of work paper wise it is very consuming.

This statement is both opaque and simply wrong.

[cacian]

This statement is both opaque and simply wrong.

I am liking opaque i am not sure i understand what you mean by wrong. :)

[Vota]

I have just lately been getting into poetry, and developing a taste for it. I'm not sure I read more than 2-3 poems over the course of my first 33 years of life. It's only been in the last 6 months or so that I have begun to read a poem every day or two, and develop the ability to read, decipher, and appreciate them.

I personally feel that books are favored more because a poem can be incredibly dense, in that the reader may have to fill in the blanks to get a sense of what is going on, in essence, you have to be mentally active while reading it if it's to be more than pretty rhyming words on a page. Also, you may have to read it multiple times, read it aloud, and work at it, if it's particularly difficult, and I think a lot of people don't want to expend mental effort at all when they read, but be completely taken for a ride where every thing is laid out for them in the simplest terms.

[JBI]

I have just lately been getting into poetry, and developing a taste for it. I'm not sure I read more than 2-3 poems over the course of my first 33 years of life. It's only been in the last 6 months or so that I have begun to read a poem every day or two, and develop the ability to read, decipher, and appreciate them.

I personally feel that books are favored more because a poem can be incredibly dense, in that the reader may have to fill in the blanks to get a sense of what is going on, in essence, you have to be mentally active while reading it if it's to be more than pretty rhyming words on a page. Also, you may have to read it multiple times, read it aloud, and work at it, if it's particularly difficult, and I think a lot of people don't want to expend mental effort at all when they read, but be completely taken for a ride where every thing is laid out for them in the simplest terms.

Well, there is also this argument - those who like poetry are those who understand it. I have yet to meet someone who actually has a good understanding of poetry who does not like it.

Seriously, in order to read modernist, or contemporary poetry you need to have some sort of a good memory and educational background. To get most of it, you need to have read it for a while. It's like Jazz music, or even hip-hop, the more you listen or read, the more you see how everything connects to other things. Without this understanding, generally there is no appreciation. Generally those who arrive at the understanding do so because they catch on to something they appreciate - be it a simpler, or more accessible work, or something that sparks their curiosity.

[MorpheusSandman]

Without this understanding, generally there is no appreciation. Depends on what one means by "appreciation." I like what Lemony Snicket said in a recent mini-anthology for Poetry Magazine where he included an Ashbery poem: "Some say Ashbery is amongst the greatest living poets. Others don't understand him at all. I count myself in both camps." I do think it's possible to like and enjoy poetry (or any art) one does not understand. In fact, I think it's a general misunderstanding that the entire point of poetry is to understand it to begin with, as if poetry was a crossword puzzle rather than an aesthetic object capable of provoking abstract emotions through linguistic abstraction the same way music or painting can provoke abstract emotions through visual or aural abstraction. There's this bias that language's only purpose is to mean something, and if one encounters language that they don't understand, then it's only worthwhile if they decipher it. I also like what Jericho Brown once said on this subject (also in Poetry Magazine):
Poems ask us not to understand in the same way that we often find ourselves not comprehending the possibility of a God in this world. One of the first poets I loved was Essex Hemphill. There’s a young man with whom I had a short affair, who is a jazz pianist studying at the Berklee College of Music, and once I showed him some poems by Hemphill. He read one and said, “I don’t get it,” and I said, “You don’t get it because you’re trying to get it. Stop doing that.”

Then I said something I actually felt smart saying: “The first time you heard Thelonious Monk you didn’t get it, but you liked it. It felt good, and you were ok with that and you moved on. Then the next time you heard it, you were like, ‘Oh, and there’s this.’ Then the next time you heard it you were like, ‘Oh, my God, there’s this too!’” I said, “Just read the poem. Just enjoy the poem.” So he sat there and he read the same poem and he said, “Oh, wow, that is a lot better!”

Is this the problem with perceiving God? Poems do carry meaning, but that doesn’t mean their meaning has to be the first thing that attracts us to them. If that were the case, we wouldn’t know who the hell Wallace Stevens is. I’ve never believed that what attracts us to poems is knowing what’s going on in them. As a matter of fact, I think just the opposite. Maybe that’s the problem people have with poetry. That’s not what we’re taught about how words can be used. I do want poems to have meaning, but I also think that having meaning isn’t the end of the conversation about poetry—or about faith.

[dralexisnoble]

I think it wouls be impossible to judge which is "better", a poem or a book, because the whole statement is so loosely defined. Even just the word better is open to so much interpretation, and it's all personal preference.
That being said, it does seem that poetry has much less of an impact today than it used to, far many of the reasons listed above, the largest probably being that it is just not understood, or rather that it is not as impactful today as it may have been in the past.
I believe that the modern day's interpretation of poetry is actually rap and hip-hop. It has the same entertainment value that poetry must have held before (think Shakespeare plays being preformed before large audiences vs Jay-Z performing in concert) It has both rhythm and rhyme schemes, as well as personal style of each artist. Many people today will tell you that poetry is dead, but I think rather than dying, it has simply transformed. Thoughts?

[Eiseabhal]

There are innumerable good single poems and they aren't all narrative. Chaneil mi a leantainn a rabht a tha agaibhse ann sheo

[ennison]

Good to see you back posting Eiseabhal. Thought the lamb sales had been too much for you. Tha thu ceart m dheidhinn an snaithlean seo. Chaneil moran ciall ann. What are you reading this weather? I opened the window and hey in flew Enza but I went back to work after toddifying her into a catatonic state. I've been reading a lot of Dr Maclachlan of Rahoy and am well into The Crimson Petal and the White. I'm finding it meretricious but can't put it aside as it has the charisma of a train crash happening before your eyes.

[Eiseabhal]

It's not a book that I know. Bha mi gu math dripeil le crodh s caoraich ach tha cuisean caran nas shocair an drasda. I have begun reading some poetry anthologies that I have around the house. A bheil An t Oranaich agaibh aig an taigh. There are quite a few Maclachlan songs in there.

[DavidAvetisov]

I would have to disagree that a poem only provides meaning between the lines as opposed to a book because a book can be written in poetic verse or other forms. There are short poems, long poems, and there are novels in verse. I have recently completed a novel in verse entitled "In Oblivion," and in it I plugged in a general story and a plot, but also a hidden meaning as an allegory. My main source of inspiration came from the influential works of the founding fathers of Russian literature (Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin's “Eugene Onegin”(a novel in verse) and Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov's “Demon,” (A long poem in verse). Their works are absolutely brilliant and I would highly suggest them to anyone.

A free sample of my novel in verse is available on amazon. Please check it out if interested.

Best,
David Avetisov

[Whosis]

Robert Frost is a good example of a poet who can put a story into a poem. They're long poems.

I've read novels that don't teach us anything--at least anything we didn't know. I find this to be less true with poems. They often teach us something we never knew we wanted to know before. The constraints of the short form somehow force the mind into generating greater, more concentrated thought. Poetry can be about anything, unlike a book, and so it commands a greater range with which to instruct us. I think it's possible to be thoughtful in a novel (by the same writer of poems, for example), but in a collection of poems versus a book, the poems are likely to win out as far as having more insightful thought. Things like character get in the way of looking into things in a novel, and lessons are often restricted to what the characters do. The one plus about novels is there may be more of a show, don't tell ethic, which is what we are taught to do as writers. It's still possible to show in poetry, but sometimes the instructions in life come out forthright as in telling.

[desiresjab]

There is an open gate that most contemporary bad poets always run through. The line is both narrative and confessional. There has been some great poetry of that stamp but the familiarity is getting forking old. Like a bad government, the ruling bodies of poetry need overthrown immediately.

These people are not really telling stories, either, they are recounting tiny episodes most of the time, much like a diary, and then breaking their prose crap arbitrarily into poetic lines. Such poems (?) often remind me of what is these days called flash fiction. Rhythmless garbage for sale. Here's one about my cat, here's one about something else. You will have to figure out what it is about yourself, because I haven't done that yet.

An eight line poem doesn't have much impact at a poetry reading (of which there is now a proliferation across the country) driving so called poets to write long episodes that are supposed to contain plenty of comic relief. If the audience keeps tittering, they call that success. It means they were not disliked.

Billy Collins would be a prime example, though I think he is pretty darned good at what he does. I am just not sure it is high poetry. Yes, there is such a thing. Anyone who cannot see in short order that Dante is light years above the mighty Swineburne and the masochist was light years above Anne Carson had really ought to give up and become a shoe clerk. A certain degree of seriousness is called for in the very best poetry most of the time. I said most of the time, didn't I?

I don't notice Yeats or Dante having a great deal of interest in the tittering of their readers. Some may find humor in the Crazy Jane poems, but I must admit I never laughed at anything Yeats wrote unless it was to laugh the way one does when witnessing something amazing. Laughs of amazement are different from tittering. But hell, I like humor, too. I don't want to oust it, but when it becomes the centerpiece for dumbing down poetry for the masses who suddenly are in the age of leisure and need an evening out, then I start having a problem with it.

No problem with confessional or narrative poetry, no problem with humor in poetry, no problem with free verse, the problem is with a lack of understanding of poetic tradition and a lack of technique to go along with it. I mean, it is kind of comforting in its way to know that Picasso could paint a girl in a dress with the best of them. He outgrew the style. That is what poets ought to do--exhaust a tradition first, learn it and outgrow it instead of jumping headfirst into the current mess. Sorry, kids, if you want to understand Einstein's or Ramanujan's or Wile's work, go learn basic algebra just for a simple starter, then trig, then calculus, then differential equations. You still have a few years to go after that. Poetry is no different, unless you want to come in spouting 2+2=4 for the audience. They already know that. Yeats, Dante, Shakespeare are deep, just as deep as Gauss or Euler in Mathematics. True, the greatest tend to skip over a lot of prepatory work as if it were child's play. To them them it is. But that is them, baby, not you and not me. Get your gloves on, is the only advice. Too many so called poets have never seen a pair of gloves.

[Iain Sparrow]

Any artistic discipline that a melodramatic teenage girl can do with relative skill, is not one to be taken too seriously. In my opinion, a poet is not in the same league as a novelist.

If I so desired, I could produce a pretty good poem tonight. No problem.
Not so if I decided to write a book.

[MorpheusSandman]

Any artistic discipline that a melodramatic teenage girl can do with relative skill, is not one to be taken too seriously. In my opinion, a poet is not in the same league as a novelist.Show me a good poem by a melodramatic teenage girl. I wish I could find the link, but about a year ago I read a story of a young teenage girl that had made millions writing novels on her cell phone.

The only way novels are harder to write than poems is that they take more time. All things being equal, the crappiest lyric poem takes much less time than the crappiest novel. To do either well takes the same time, dedication, practice, study, etc. that it takes to do ANYTHING well. Even the notion that it's possible to write a good poem in a day ignores the years worth of work that facilitates such creativity. Personally, I think it's much harder to do what, say, Yeats did than what, say, Faulkner did. Both brilliant, yes, but Faulkner didn't have to worry about rhyme and meter and line and stanza, which all good poets DO worry about. Even if lyric poetry removes the burden of having to establish and sustain a narrative, it imposes its own challenges that are just as hard to master, especially formally.

[MorpheusSandman]

There is an open gate that most contemporary bad poets always run through. The line is both narrative and confessional.I think most poets, period, run through these lines. Narrative poetry has been around since poetry's inception, after all, and most all writers use aspects of their life in their writing. Really, if any NEW mode of poetry in the 20th century was dominant it was of an experimental nature, especially with the LANGUAGE poets, surrealists, and postmodernists.


These people are not really telling stories, either, they are recounting tiny episodes most of the time, much like a diary, and then breaking their prose crap arbitrarily into poetic lines.Snapped prose is a good phrase I once read to describe arbitrarily lineated poetry. Of course, deciding what's arbitrary and what's not isn't the easiest thing in the world. Poets think differently about the effects and purposes of line breaks and how/why they use them. You thinking differently than another poet can lead you to find arbitrary what to them was quite deliberate and purposeful.

Anyway, narratives are little more than multiple episodes themselves, and obviously to develop several episodes one needs more space than is typically found in lyric poetry but is always found in a novel. But narrative is narrative regardless of whether it's one episode or one thousand. It also goes without saying that there's still plenty of genuine narrative poetry out there. Merwin, Ashbery, Carson, and Walcott have all written book-length narrative poems in relatively recent years: Merwin's Folding Cliffs, Ashbery's Girls on the Run, Carson's Autobiography of Red, and Walcott's Omeros.


A certain degree of seriousness is called for in the very best poetry most of the time. I said most of the time, didn't I?Auden would probably disagree; especially middle and late Auden. After his earliest work, humor and light wit were probably his primary mode, and it's probably what alienated so many looking for him to be the next Eliot.


That is what poets ought to do--exhaust a tradition first, learn it and outgrow it instead of jumping headfirst into the current mess... Yeats, Dante, Shakespeare...It's worth pointing out, though, that Yeats, Dante, and Shakespeare were working quite solidly in the traditions of their day. Often what resonates in their work is the trifecta of echoing the past, present, and future simultaneously, but they probably spent most of their time in the milieu of the present. I'd say one problem is that a great many poets feel most of the past IS exhausted unless it's radically modified. There's still the reverberation of the feelings of the modernists that the formalism of the 19th century had gone as far as it could go, that Yeats and Frost were its last gasp, and that the few 20th century exceptions WERE merely exceptions and that most have a better chance at being relevant by avoiding that tradition all together.

It's hard to argue with when we consider that the most influential poets of the 20th century were almost all themselves the radical experimentalists, and have been so almost exclusively since Whitman and Dickinson. I also think it's the fact that the innovations of the latter hinted towards areas of poetry that had yet to be explored, and for the last 150-or-so years poets have been more interested in exploring that relatively new territory. There's still that lingering feeling with, eg, meter, rhyme, and closed forms that we've been there, done that, and the greats did it far better than we (ie, contemporary poets) have a chance at. When Eliot wrote his heroic couplets in The Waste Land, Pound's editorial remarks that (paraphrased): "it's not as good as Pope; don't do it unless you can do it as good as Pope" seem to echo with every poet that might even dare step into that mountain of tradition.

Obviously I'm in favor of poets learning from tradition, if only to see what they CAN extract from it and use in their own work. I certainly don't think anything is gained by ignoring it, but I do think it's an open question how much contemporary poets should fell impelled to revive or work within that tradition, and I understand the reasons why many ignore it all together, or, at least, ignore it to the extent that they don't try to replicate its formal aspects.

[Pierre Menard]

Any artistic discipline that a melodramatic teenage girl can do with relative skill, is not one to be taken too seriously. In my opinion, a poet is not in the same league as a novelist.

If I so desired, I could produce a pretty good poem tonight. No problem.
Not so if I decided to write a book.



This is just an absurdly idiotic and ignorant post.

Seriously.

[Iain Sparrow]

Show me a good poem by a melodramatic teenage girl. I wish I could find the link, but about a year ago I read a story of a young teenage girl that had made millions writing novels on her cell phone.

The only way novels are harder to write than poems is that they take more time. All things being equal, the crappiest lyric poem takes much less time than the crappiest novel. To do either well takes the same time, dedication, practice, study, etc. that it takes to do ANYTHING well. Even the notion that it's possible to write a good poem in a day ignores the years worth of work that facilitates such creativity. Personally, I think it's much harder to do what, say, Yeats did than what, say, Faulkner did. Both brilliant, yes, but Faulkner didn't have to worry about rhyme and meter and line and stanza, which all good poets DO worry about. Even if lyric poetry removes the burden of having to establish and sustain a narrative, it imposes its own challenges that are just as hard to master, especially formally.


Nonsense.

A perfect example of Novels vs. Poetry, is Mary Shelley and her worthless, silly husband, Percy Shelley.
Take a masterwork from each, Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus and Queen Mab. Both were produced early on in their respective careers, are thematically strong and well written, respond to some revolutionary philosophical ideas of the time... but that is where the similarities end. The sheer weight of narrative structure and arc, character development, plot avenues, metaphor, symbolism, allegory, and the other literary devices Mary Shelly employs in Frankenstein completely trounce Queen Mab, or any poem I've ever read.

Poetry is a parody of a novel.

[Iain Sparrow]

This is just an absurdly idiotic and ignorant post.

Seriously.


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

Seriously.

[JCamilo]

Let's just point, a parody can be superior to the original. Now let's read a poem by Dan Brown:

Take a masterwork from each, Frankenstein,
or The Modern Prometheus and Queen Mab.
Both were produced early on in their
respective careers, are thematically strong
and well written, respond to some
revolutionary philosophical ideas of the time...

but that is where the similarities end.
The sheer weight of narrative structure and arc,
character development, plot avenues, metaphor,
symbolism, allegory, and the other literary devices
Mary Shelly employs in Frankenstein completely
trounce Queen Mab, or any poem I've ever read.

[cacian]

Any artistic discipline that a melodramatic teenage girl can do with relative skill, is not one to be taken too seriously. In my opinion, a poet is not in the same league as a novelist.
If I so desired, I could produce a pretty good poem tonight. No problem.
Not so if I decided to write a book.
really?
I personally prefer a poet to a novelist.
most of the time a poet is sincere but a novelist is deviant.

[cacian]

poetry veers towards the truth whilst a book leads towards delusion.

[Iain Sparrow]

poetry veers towards the truth whilst a book leads towards delusion.


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

[Iain Sparrow]

really?
I personally prefer a poet to a novelist.
most of the time a poet is sincere but a novelist is deviant.

I'll take the deviant novelist over the sincere poet any old day.

[MorpheusSandman]

A perfect example of Novels vs. Poetry, is Mary Shelley and her worthless, silly husband, Percy Shelley... Poetry is a parody of a novel.Oh, you're a moron/troll. Wish I had known before; I wouldn't have bothered responding.

Percy Shelley is about 1,000,000 times better than Mary and Prometheus Unbound, Queen Mab, Adonais, and Alastor (and a great many of Shelley's poems) are far better than Frankenstein, despite its cult status.

Literature is capable of far more than mere plot and characters, and if you don't find more metaphor, symbolism, and allegory in poetry than in novels I have to question what poetry you've read. A great amount of poetry is nothing BUT allegory (late William Blake, Faerie Queene, Divine Comedy, etc.), and metaphor/symbolism are far more common in poetry. Hell, there was an entire movement built around symbolism, of which Yeats was perhaps the pinnacle in English.

[Aere Perennius]

Auden would probably disagree; especially middle and late Auden. After his earliest work, humor and light wit were probably his primary mode, and it's probably what alienated so many looking for him to be the next Eliot.


It's a good thing I consider Auden an average poet— in any period of his life. However, even Pater, that man of such hushed excitement for beauty, agreed that a work of art could not be great without "truth," which I equate with a certain tone of seriousness. Bradley said it best when he described that a great poem about a pinhead is really no longer about the pinhead.

Wow, your superficial remarks and stereotypical answers (ripped from many books of more talented individuals, but that's no matter: has long as you don't pretend they are original thoughts) has elicited a rather positive remark from me!

[MorpheusSandman]

...a work of art could not be great without "truth," which I equate with a certain tone of seriousness.There's no reason why truth should be serious at all. Take satire, or even a specific work of satire like Pope's Rape of the Lock. There's an unserious work full of truth about how people can take entirely trivial matters far too seriously. If anything, seriousness can often be a sign that people have lost all perspective.


Wow, your superficial remarks and stereotypical answers (ripped from many books of more talented individuals, but that's no matter: has long as you don't pretend they are original thoughts) has elicited a rather positive remark from me!Are you going to continue sniping at me every chance you get? Admin will ban you if you don't cut it out, and I don't get what your beef is with me anyway. Why don't you offer up some profound insights of your own and then maybe you can be in a position to judge my "stereotypical answers," since all I've seen you do thus far is give equally stereotypical answers ("greatness requires truth!") from more talented individuals yourself. Never mind that most of the 20th century art and criticism was far more concerned about showing the impossibility at arriving at absolute truths (especially in art). For all their differences, the New Critics and later theorists at least seemed to agree that art was not philosophy or science, and to judge it as if it were was fallacious and faulty from the get-go. I'm sure you're aware of Cleanth Brooks' essays on the matter as it relates to poetry, no? How about Derrida? What says your oh-so-original self to them?

[Aere Perennius]

There's no reason why truth should be serious at all. Take satire, or even a specific work of satire like Pope's Rape of the Lock. There's an unserious work full of truth about how people can take entirely trivial matters far too seriously. If anything, seriousness can often be a sign that people have lost all perspective.

All sincerity is serious; therefore, all truth is seriousness. This is obviously a case of semantics but I think you would find few who disagree with this. To cite Pope, who like Fielding only played the comic to push their morals, shows you didn't really understand Pope's poetry.


Never mind that most of the 20th century art and criticism was far more concerned about showing the impossibility at arriving at absolute truths (especially in art). For all their differences, the New Critics and later theorists at least seemed to agree that art was not philosophy or science, and to judge it as if it were was fallacious and faulty from the get-go. I'm sure you're aware of Cleanth Brooks' essays on the matter as it relates to poetry, no? How about Derrida? What says your oh-so-original self to them?

As if showing the impossibility of truth isn't trying to show truth in itself? Complete paradox and reeks of shallow criticism that continues to stain post-modernism because shallow critics have yet to realize this view never really took place: Eliot? No. Joyce? No. Proust? Most certainly not. From James to Trilling to Borges, truth has been a center. You cannot have a worthy piece of literature without truth..as I just stated. New Criticism: that long-lasting and highly accepted theory...Deconstructionist....these are perhaps the two most refuted and short-lived theoretical movements in history; which does not say they are bad in themselves but that literature rejects them as a whole.

[MorpheusSandman]

All sincerity is serious; therefore, all truth is seriousness. This is obviously a case of semantics...Yes, it's semantics. I took "serious" to mean "grave, somber, weighty or important" not "sincerity." That said, if you think Pope was sincere you obviously don't get the role of satire, irony, and sarcasm, which doesn't make its point by sincerity but rather by the intentional perception of insincerity. We're supposed to recognize that what's being depicted isn't to be taken at face value, that it isn't sincere, and that's the only way to extract any "moral" from it. Beyond this, as Auden eloquently laid out by way of Shakespeare, the truest poetry is the most feigning, (http://audiopoetry.wordpress.com/2007/02/15/the-truest-poetry-is-the-most-feigning/) essentially meaning that there's a gap between actual truth and our perception of truth. To say that an hour was an eon is not true except on the experiential level, and little is as falsifying as our experience. This is why Stevens' life-long theme was the disjunction between reality and the imagination, between the way things were and the way things seemed to us. Auden suggests that we wouldn't care about poetry (or probably any art) if it was actually truthful, but only if it replicates the falsity of experience.


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


You cannot have a worthy piece of literature without truth..as I just stated.Yes, thank you for repeating the cliche and utterly failing to address ANY of the criticisms made against such attempts at attaining truth in art or literature. Your summary dismissals of postmodernism, New Criticism, Deconstruction, etc. are hardly arguments against their claims. Now who's being utterly superficial?

[Aere Perennius]

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

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


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

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


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

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



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

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

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

[Pierre Menard]

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

Seriously.

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

[Iain Sparrow]

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


How wonderfully condescending you are.

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

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

Is that ignorant enough for you?

[MorpheusSandman]

But besides that, I only said "great" artwork contains sincere truth —this does not mean they are entirely made of it. If Pope had nothing sincere to say in Rape of the Lock, to take from that horrible Auden poem you posted, "who would read it?".Neither of us know if anything in The Rape of the Lock is sincere. From what I can tell given the context in which it was written, it seems mostly an exercise in aesthetics and social defusion. I could believe that Pope's vastly inferior Essay on Man is "sincere," but Rape of the Lock? It strikes me as mostly feigned, or, at least, quite unconcerned with truth values. Anyway, let's also not overlook these other salient points:

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


(And your ironic understanding of Godel "true but not provable" makes me laugh) To say truth is an impossibility is a truth IS a paradox.Care to explain why it makes you laugh? One can always add the "except this one" addendum to "truth is an impossibility," which easily quells the paradox.

Anyway, you've gotten away from my original point, which was concerned more with truth as its expressed in art as opposed to truth in general. I think most, eg, would accept the truths found in the formal systems of math and science, but art is neither. Much of 20th century criticism was heavily involved with pointing out how the same texts can support contradictory interpretations, or in which there is not enough evidence within the work to decide what "truth" is being stated in any absolute sense. One of the clearest examples of this is in the controversy over Wordsworth's A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal. Brian Caraher wrote a whole book on it. (http://www.amazon.com/Wordsworths-Slumber-Problematics-Reading-Caraher/dp/0271026243/) If this kind of ambiguity of meaning can be built up over such a simple lyric poem, imagine how easily it is to build them up over the course of a novel, epic, or any narrative!


Your proposing that they found it unsolvable (not provable and nonsensical considering these writers said otherwise) yet Eliot relied on theology to solve it for him...that doesn't make sense.A little reading comprehension please. I said they otherwise (ie, without religion) found it unsolvable. Whether it was ACTUALLY solvable with religion is another matter.

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


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


Read Coleridge's Biographia Literaria or du Bellay's prose works, and you'll see a true individual mind working on the "canon;"You cite guys that have been dead for over a century in a response to being challenged about Modern and Postmodern literary theories! What in the world makes you think Coleridge or Du Bellay had it all right?


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

[MorpheusSandman]

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

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

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

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

[stlukesguild]

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

[Iain Sparrow]

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

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

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


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

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

[Iain Sparrow]

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


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

State your case for poetry.

[MorpheusSandman]

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


nobody pays money for it,Poetry Magazine has a larger circulation now than it ever has, so somebody must be paying for it.


and has long since fallen below "niche" status.What the hell is "below niche status?"


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

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

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

[JCamilo]

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

State your case for poetry.

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

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

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

[MorpheusSandman]

And Jane Austen could write great novels, but her poems...I wasn't even aware Austen wrote poems. George Eliot was another great novelist/mediocre poet.

[JCamilo]

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

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

[cacian]

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

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

[Poetaster]

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

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

[cacian]

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

not Larkin surely. he certainly brought misery to the table when I last heard him.
that is not what poetry is about.

[cacian]

How wonderfully condescending you are.

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

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

Is that ignorant enough for you?

poetry is the heart of the matter those who put it down are those who cannot read it to save their lives.
and it is true poetry today is about lament and causing distress.

[MorpheusSandman]

I am not claiming good novelists (or prose writers) cannot write good poems. Very true. One merely needs to look to Thomas Hardy as one of the few writers was equally great in both forms.

[Poetaster]

not Larkin surely. he certainly brought misery to the table when I last heard, that is not what poetry is about.

The misery was exactly what I was referring to, and the cynicism of the poem I mentioned is a refutation to a point about poetry being idealistic, lofty, and high-minded. Poetry can be about anything a poet wishes to say - it's a medium, one of the finest and oldest we have.

[cacian]

The misery was exactly what I was referring to, and the cynicism of the poem I mentioned is a refutation to a point about poetry being idealistic, lofty, and high-minded. Poetry can be about anything a poet wishes to say - it's a medium, one of the finest and oldest we have.

cynicism plays no major role in literature's improvement. in fact it makes reading rather morose and slows down inspiration for more literature.
to idealise something is to put it on a pedestal and not reach it . that is pointless too.
poetry is a medium I agree and so it must be widely known to reach out to all and the only way it would do this is when it is abrupt but proper. ie light and full of life. the only time we humans get together is when we celebrate something when we are full of ourselves content. we tend to diverge otherwise wrapped up in our own miseries. poetry is not miserable it is a positive vibe.

[Poetaster]

cynicism plays no major role in literature's improvement. in fact it makes reading rather morose and slows down inspiration for more literature.
to idealise something is to put it on a pedestal and not reach it . that is pointless too.

I'm not sure that's true to be honest, and I think it's rather reductionist. Cynicism and depression have played key roles in some of the most famous works of literature. What is Catch-22 if not a cynical parody of bureaucracy, what is Lovecraft's entire ethos if not a deeply cynical and pessemistic comment on the minuteness and insignificance of the human experience.


poetry is a medium I agree and so it must widely known to reach out to all and the only way it would do this is when it is abrupt but proper. ie light and full of life. the only time we humans get together is when we celebrate something when are full of ourselves content. we tend to diverge otherwise wrapped up in our miseries. poetry is not miserable it is a positive vibe.

Poetry can be somber and miserable. Certainly not as utterly spirited as you seem to think. Look at the first masterpiece, The Odyssey, and Odysseus in the underworld meeting the great warrior Achillies to find he'd rather be the lowest slave on the mortal world than rule the land of the dead. I'm not sure how that scene could be 'positive' even for an ancient Greek audience; and then as recent as Lord Byron's 'Darkness', they are poems that do not has positive vibes. To suggest poetry must conform to ideas of poetry is ridiculous. And it's reductionist, again.

[cacian]

I'm not sure that's true to be honest, and I think it's rather reductionist. Cynicism and depression have played key roles in some of the most famous works of literature. What is Catch-22 if not a cynical parody of bureaucracy, what is Lovecraft's entire ethos if not a deeply cynical and pessemistic comment on the minuteness and insignificance of the human experience.



Poetry can be somber and miserable. Certainly not as utterly spirited as you seem to think. Look at the first masterpiece, The Odyssey, and Odysseus in the underworld meeting the great warrior Achillies to find he'd rather be the lowest slave on the mortal world than rule the land of the dead. I'm not sure how that scene could be 'positive' even for an ancient Greek audience; and then as recent as Lord Byron's 'Darkness', they are poems that do not has positive vibes. To suggest poetry must conform to ideas of poetry is ridiculous. And it's reductionist, again.

what we desire and what life desires are two very different things and until we have reached that common ground that we both desire the same literature will continue to carry the burden of human discrepancy and suffering.

the human experience as far as I know is best left unread. to write about it again and again will not change life a bit.
we could read about the human enhancement instead. we seem to carry the tag that unless we read about a tragedy we are unknown of it. we make a clichés of ourselves and thus avoid us or the point entirely.
literature is a breath of fresh air. just like winter it needs the rain and the sun in equal measures but one thing is does not need is tons of aggression.

[Poetaster]

what we desire and what life desires are two very different things and until we have reached that common ground that we both desire the same literature will continue to carry the burden of human discrepancy and suffering.

the human experience as far as I know is best left unread. to write about again and again will not change life a bit.
we could read about the human enhancement instead. we seem to carry the tag that unless we read about a tragedy we are unknown of it. we make a clichés of ourselves and thus avoid us or the point entirely.
literature is a breath of fresh air. just like winter it needs the rain and the sun in equal measures but one thing is does not need is tons of aggression.

You might have to rephrase this, I honestly can't make heads or tails of it. If you are saying literature should be an ideal, what can I say? I guess we just read for different reasons. One doesn't need to invalidate the other.

[cacian]

You might have to rephrase this, I honestly can't make heads or tails of it. If you are saying literature should be an ideal, what can I say? I guess we just read for different reasons. One doesn't need to invalidate the other.

I am trying to say literature could be a mean to success not failure.
all the great works you mentioned in your earlier post have their own merits but they do not fit in within our modern frame of time.
the human mind needs updating with new ideas that will move it forward towards greater achievement.
to read what was written hundred of years ago does not sit well with the modern way of thinking.
literature is great if we are great with it. but literature that highlights the human's tragedy and reinforce human failure is to me procrastinating.
there is no greater failure then stagnation.
I mean can I ask why you life Virgil. at which point did you think it worthy?
because every work of such weight carries an insignia that it cannot be all perfect or it would not be perfect if you see what I mean.

[Poetaster]

I am trying to say literature could be a mean to success not failure.

So, do you think depression and writing about it, or cynicism and writing about it, cannot be a form of therapy? I can't say Lord Byron or Auden are what I think of when I think of 'failure', nor is the melancholy in some of the poems they wrote.


all the great works you mentioned in your earlier post have their own merits but they do not fit in within our modern frame of time.

If that's true, why are they still studied? And also, one of the works I mentioned was written in our modern world.


the human mind needs updating with new ideas that will move it forward towards greater achievement.

Who ever said human society is all about advancement, and cannot be about reflection?


to read what was written hundred of years ago does not sit well with the modern way of thinking.

Well, why? What exactly do you mean? Because 'modern thinking' is so vague it's almost meaningless. I'm reminded of the futurists.


literature is great if we are great with it. but literature that highlights the human's tragedy and reinforce human failure is to me procrastinating.
there is no greater failure then stagnation.

That's what you think, I suppose I can see where you are coming from, but human beings are more complex than merely being driven to progression - and more somber literature has it's place because it's what people think and feel. I don't see the merit in the idea of not exposing human nature to itself.


I mean can I ask why you life Virgil. at which point did you think it worthy?

I like Virgil because he captured perfectly the struggles of his time in his earlier work like the Eclogues and Georgics, and what was going on in the Roman empire at the beginning of the fall, and in the Aeneid created a very impressive narrative that captures (I think) all sides of the human experience. If not Aeneas, then Odysseus from Homer are two of the most well formed people in literature, and I struggle to pick between those two works.

Virgil is worthy of being read because he wrote a poem that's now other 1,000 years old and it's still being enjoyed and learned from. Be it Aeneas's journey to the underworld to see his father, his fleeing burning Troy, or the battles he has to face in Italy to establish his new Trojan society, he sees human conflict and all sorts of emotions that we still in many ways think and feel.


because every work of such weight carries an insignia that it cannot be all perfect or it would not be perfect if you see what I mean.

I think I might see what you mean, but I don't believe perfection exists personally. I think pursuing perfection is doomed to failure. That's just me, I guess, and I suppose my taste in literature reflects my life-philosophy.

[cacian]

So, do you think depression and writing about it, or cynicism and writing about it, cannot be a form of therapy? I can't say Lord Byron or Auden are what I think of when I think of 'failure', nor is the melancholy in some of the poems they wrote.

I feel depression is a condition.
writing is a liberating act. it is telling something to someone and so it better be impressive or it wont be read.
making an impression is not depression.
we do in a real world when we meet new people, we want to please and be pleased.
the same goes with a book for me to pick it up it has to impress.
this means the content has to reflect my moods and my expectations.
wondering off on a depressive note distract more. I know I prefer uplifting vibes not morose ones. I do not see the point in that. :)

If that's true, why are they still studied? And also, one of the works I mentioned was written in our modern world.
I am not sure which you are talking about.


Who ever said human society is all about advancement, and cannot be about reflection?

society is about achievement. life is for living and reflection is as a result of it. we reflect because we want to achieve.


Well, why? What exactly do you mean? Because 'modern thinking' is so vague it's almost meaningless. I'm reminded of the futurists.

by modern thinking I mean literature that tells me about things new things. reading about how one can go from a to z and making a success out of it and enjoying it goes a long way. reading about a character that is destructive and yet claim heroism is dogmatic.


That's what you think, I suppose I can see where you are coming from, but human beings are more complex than merely being driven to progression - and more somber literature has it's place because it's what people think and feel. I don't see the merit in the idea of not exposing human nature to itself.
somber is a human condition and not human nature. we are generally keen to be alive and so we enjoy the fact that we can see ourselves getting the best of every opportunity.
literature that is somber teaches scepticism and makes one morose which means it stands in the way of thinking and achieving things. one needs a good doze of feel good factor if one want is to get up and do things.
and fun literature is one that does very well.



I like Virgil because he captured perfectly the struggles of his time in his earlier work like the Eclogues and Georgics, and what was going on in the Roman empire at the beginning of the fall, and in the Aeneid created a very impressive narrative that captures (I think) all sides of the human experience. If not Aeneas, then Odysseus from Homer are two of the most well formed people in literature, and I struggle to pick between those two works.

Virgil is worthy of being read because he wrote a poem that's now other 1,000 years old and it's still being enjoyed and learned from. Be it Aeneas's journey to the underworld to see his father, his fleeing burning Troy, or the battles he has to face in Italy to establish his new Trojan society, he sees human conflict and all sorts of emotions that we still in many ways think and feel

I thought these were work of fictions rather then facts.

I think I might see what you mean, but I don't believe perfection exists personally. I think pursuing perfection is doomed to failure. That's just me, I guess, and I suppose my taste in literature reflects my life-philosophy.
philosophy is a funny thing. I never understood it. the idea that I have to think about the meaning of everything delays things I want to get on with and do. I just do and think less of why I do. this means I focus more on how I do .
I like to read yes but I do not want to ponder on what was that could have been.
I guess it is a personal choice a question of taste. :)

[Poetaster]

I feel depression is a condition.
writing is a liberating act. it is telling something to someone and so it better be impressive or it wont be read.
making an impression is not depression.
we do in a real world when we meet new people, we want to please and be pleased.
the same goes with a book for me to pick it up it has to impress.
this means the content has to reflect my moods and my expectations.
wondering off on a depressive note may distract more. I know I prefer uplifting vibes not morose ones. I do not see the point in that. :)

You may prefer to be uplifted, but to go from personal taste to saying that is how poetry should be is I think wrong. But whatever.


I am not sure which you are talking about.

All of those works I have mentioned are still studied at GCSE, A-level and University level. If they were so out of tune with the modern world they wouldn't be studied, why should we study something that doesn't matter?


society is about achievement. life is for living and reflection is as a result of it. we reflect because we want to achieve.

Who ever said it's about achievement? I've never heard of achievement as being the only goal for human society and culture.


by modern thinking I mean literature that tells me about things new things. reading about how one can go from a to z and making a success out of it and enjoying it goes a long way. reading about a character that is destructive and yet claim heroism is dogmatic.


I'm not sure how what you perceive as outdated is 'dogmatic' at all, but if all you are interested in is new things then I'm not sure what to say, it's a highly reductionist thing to say, and again the futurists come to mind.


somber is a human condition and not a human nature. we are generally keen to be alive and so we enjoy the fact that we can see ourselves getting the best of every opportunity.
literature that is somber teaches scepticism and makes me morose which means it stands in my way of achieving things. I need that good feel factor if I want to get up and do things.

How can something be a human condition but not human nature? That doesn't make sense. What is wrong with skepticism?


I thought these were work of fictions rather then facts.

I don't know what to say.

[JCamilo]

Well, let me explain. Do you know that young athenians that are sent to the labyrinth? Well, once one of them didn't want to find the center of the labyrinth, but didn't want to find the way out either. She took the route that no one would take, so the minotaur didnt found her, neither Teseus. She did not saw Ariadne's tread. She may be here yet.

That is Cacian :D

And yes, Dido's death, how Aeneias, without knowing it, understands it happened because a smoke column... That is certainly great. If I want to be modern I can read it as how the symbols can have meanings from their significance or maybe the power of interpretation, between the lines, etc.etc.etc.

[stlukesguild]

So Cacian is a Borghesian? T'would explain much.