Poetic Licence

[cacian]

the pros and cons.

what is Poetic Licence?

[PeterL]

That's the permit that you got from the authorities before you started writing poetry. It allows you to write whatever you want to write, even if the metaphors are stretched and some words are twisted a little out of shape. ANd it includes the license to ignore the rules of grammar whenever you want. Without the license you would be cited for any of those offenses, if you were caught.

[Michael T]

That's the permit that you got from the authorities before you started writing poetry. It allows you to write whatever you want to write, even if the metaphors are stretched and some words are twisted a little out of shape. ANd it includes the license to ignore the rules of grammar whenever you want. Without the license you would be cited for any of those offenses, if you were caught.

I had mine revoked by the authorities some time ago! :ack2:

[cacian]

That's the permit that you got from the authorities before you started writing poetry. It allows you to write whatever you want to write, even if the metaphors are stretched and some words are twisted a little out of shape. ANd it includes the license to ignore the rules of grammar whenever you want. Without the license you would be cited for any of those offenses, if you were caught.

hi Peter how do you mean the authorities? who needs a Licence to write poetry?

[cacian]

I had mine revoked by the authorities some time ago! :ack2:

you are kidding right?

[Michael T]

you are kidding right?

Yes cacian, I'm kidding, and so is PeterL, although his post does point you in the right direction. :smile5:

Here is a simple explanation from the web that should help...


Poetic licence, the right assumed by poets to alter or invert standard syntax or depart from common diction or pronunciation to comply with the metrical or tonal requirements of their writing.

As a general rule, poetry has a carefully controlled verbal structure. The metre of the poem, the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables, and the sounds and modulations of the words themselves all affect the subtle meanings and feelings that the poet may be trying to convey or evoke. Poets may distort normal prose patterns for the sake of form and therefore assume poetic licence; it is solely a matter of aesthetic judgment and sensibility as to whether the alterations enhance or detract from the total effect of the poem.



The term poetic licence is also sometimes used in a humorous or pejorative sense to provide an excuse for careless or superficial writing.

[cacian]

I see I think I a mnot sure why would the term be made up at all. I thought writing had no etiquette as far as literature goes. why poet licence?

[PeterL]

hi Peter how do you mean the authorities? who needs a Licence to write poetry?

That was tongue in cheek.

But the people who determine, or try to enforce, the rules of grammar become upset if they don't realize that a piece of poetry is poetry. And there are people who have trouble understanding metaphors, but in poetry one is expected to use metaphor.

[PeterL]

I see I think I am not sure why would the term be made up at all. I thought writing had no etiquette as far as literature goes. why poet licence?

Poetic license is a slightly humorous and slightly off use of the word "license". In its broadest sense "license" means
"permission to do or not to do something or liberty of action or thought; freedom." It is from the Latin 'licet' it is allowed.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/license?s=t

There are many rules of grammar, usage, syntax, etc. that apply to writing, but poetry is a little different, because it is expected to have metaphor and twisted word usage. Thus poetry is allowed, or licensed, to evade the some rules.

[cacian]

That was tongue in cheek.

But the people who determine, or try to enforce, the rules of grammar become upset if they don't realize that a piece of poetry is poetry. And there are people who have trouble understanding metaphors, but in poetry one is expected to use metaphor.

I agree why become upset about anything especially poetry? I do not understand personally anyone getting about creativity.
metaphor or not one is not obliged to use anything to express their thoughts. the whole point of poetry is that it is free spirited no rules is what poetry should be about.

[PeterL]

I agree why become upset about anything especially poetry? I do not understand personally anyone getting about creativity.
metaphor or not one is not obliged to use anything to express their thoughts. the whole point of poetry is that it is free spirited no rules is what poetry should be about.

Using no rules would make poetry gibberish, utterly meaningless. Twisting, bending, and taking shortcuts are fine, but what goo would it be if no one could understand it?

The essence of language is communication. If it doesn't communicate, then is it language?

[Mohammad Ahmad]

Where is poetic licence in the world?
I think not, and even if it is possible to be found, I am not satisfied to take a licence just to be be a famous poet or a writer.
Does the licence teach you to write poetry? Otherwise , do you as soon as you get the licence will be a poet?
I think the licence is a permission of some publisher places allowing you to publish your books and so on.

[Michael T]

Where is poetic licence in the world?
I think not, and even if it is possible to be found, I am not satisfied to take a licence just to be be a famous poet or a writer.
Does the licence teach you to write poetry? Otherwise , do you as soon as you get the licence will be a poet?
I think the licence is a permission of some publisher places allowing you to publish your books and so on.

Hi Mohammad Ahmad. When people talk about 'poetic licence' they just mean the freedom people have, especially when writing poetry, to bend the rules of grammar - syntax, punctuation etc to achieve the meanings and feelings that they are trying to convey or evoke in whoever is going to read it. It is just a term people use - not an actual licence like a driving licence.

If you sit down now and write some poetry, and choose to bend the rules of grammar - for effect - you will be using poetic licence. :smile5:

[JBI]

It's the idea that once you know what you "should" do, you can break the rules, but it also requires a sort of forehand knowledge of the rules. This does not mean poets can do whatever they want, but it means sometimes bending the rules, or breaking them can add to the effect, instead of detract.

[sandy14]

It means situations, events, characters, language and punctuation may be altered to suit the crafting, or drama of the poem. Art does not have to reflect reality and this is the poetic licence.

According to Adrian Mitchell, it also allows the emergency poet to spring into action to save people from severe bouts of prosodic episodes. The emergency poet can use sirens, emergency lanes and the air poetry service in emergencies. See his B rave Emergency Poet poem.

[miyako73]

Poetic license is literary arrogance. Calling a blank paper a poem because the title is "Emperor's New Sonnet" is banal arrogance.

[cacian]

Hi Mohammad Ahmad. When people talk about 'poetic licence' they just mean the freedom people have, especially when writing poetry, to bend the rules of grammar - syntax, punctuation etc to achieve the meanings and feelings that they are trying to convey or evoke in whoever is going to read it. It is just a term people use - not an actual licence like a driving licence.

I guess it is along the line or similar to P correctness. one is aware before one says something.

If you sit down now and write some poetry, and choose to bend the rules of grammar - for effect - you will be using poetic licence. :smile5:
not necessarily I do not have to call it anything I feel the minute I call it something I have stigmatised it.
no title is better then titles in this case.

[Mohammad Ahmad]

Hi Mohammad Ahmad. When people talk about 'poetic licence' they just mean the freedom people have, especially when writing poetry, to bend the rules of grammar - syntax, punctuation etc to achieve the meanings and feelings that they are trying to convey or evoke in whoever is going to read it. It is just a term people use - not an actual licence like a driving licence.

If you sit down now and write some poetry, and choose to bend the rules of grammar - for effect - you will be using poetic licence. :smile5:
Thank you to the explanation

[MorpheusSandman]

Using no rules would make poetry gibberish, utterly meaningless. Twisting, bending, and taking shortcuts are fine, but what goo would it be if no one could understand it?

The essence of language is communication. If it doesn't communicate, then is it language?I don't know about "no rules," but I do think any rules can be (and are) twisted and bent to the breaking point, and not just in poetry but all the arts. We wouldn't have had the likes of Picasso, Wagner, Whitman, and so many others without a willingness to radically rethink what their mediums were capable of. As for "nobody understanding it," there is a long history of artists whom nobody understood in their lifetime, and for which understanding came (often incompletely) with time and study. I remember reading William Blake wondering how it was possible for anyone to make sense of him. Then I read several different critical works and commentary on him and found him not only sensible but ingenious.

The essence of language is communication but the essence of art is experience, and in order to make language an experience you have to defamiliarize it to some extent. Sure, you can have great poetry in simple, direct, understandable language like Frost and Yeats; but you can't have poets like Milton and Dickinson.

[MorpheusSandman]

Poetic license is literary arrogance. Calling a blank paper a poem because the title is "Emperor's New Sonnet" is banal arrogance.I don't really see what the former statement has to do with the latter.

[cacian]

Poetic license is literary arrogance. Calling a blank paper a poem because the title is "Emperor's New Sonnet" is banal arrogance.

Emperor's New Sonnet? a blank paper?

[Calidore]

Emperor's New Sonnet? a blank paper?

http://www.andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/hersholt/TheEmperorsNewClothes_e.html

[miyako73]

Morpheus, I cited a real, published poem as an example of poetic license as literary arrogance.

A national poet in my country named Jose Garcia Villa, who was a friend of E.E. Cummings, wrote the following poems in the 60's:



The Emperor's New Sonnet

























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

The Bashful One








,







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

http://i1311.photobucket.com/albums/s672/miyako1973/d043aac1-9cf0-4bca-9e8f-449ee4850de5_zpsa3496136.jpg (http://s1311.photobucket.com/user/miyako1973/media/d043aac1-9cf0-4bca-9e8f-449ee4850de5_zpsa3496136.jpg.html)






--------------------------
When he was criticized, his simple answer was: POETIC LICENSE.

[miyako73]

Oh, I forgot this one, another "poem" by Villa:


http://i1311.photobucket.com/albums/s672/miyako1973/7e72bcc4-2e6a-416c-be87-9bb353432608_zps6509952e.gif (http://s1311.photobucket.com/user/miyako1973/media/7e72bcc4-2e6a-416c-be87-9bb353432608_zps6509952e.gif.html)


By the way those poems were published and anthologized in the US.

[MorpheusSandman]

Morpheus, I cited a real, published poem as an example of poetic license as literary arrogance.One example of poetic license as literary arrogance =/= all examples of poetic license as literary arrogance.

FWIW, John Cage may have "written" a musical composition that was 4'33" of silence, but that's hardly an indictment against his musical intelligence or other compositions.

[miyako73]

Did John Cage invoke "poetic license" or "musical license"--if there is one?

[MorpheusSandman]

Anytime someone purposefully upsets expectations within a given medium/genre they're implicitly invoking their own form of poetic license, since that's basically what poetic license is. I don't see much difference conceptually between "Emperor's New Sonnet" and 4'33".

[PeterL]

Emperor's New Sonnet? a blank paper?

That would be an excellent poem. It refers to the fable "The Emperor's New Clothes".

[miyako73]

Anytime someone purposefully upsets expectations within a given medium/genre they're implicitly invoking their own form of poetic license, since that's basically what poetic license is. I don't see much difference conceptually between "Emperor's New Sonnet" and 4'33".

I don't think you understood the exclusive nature of poetic license. Try writing poems like those, let's see if you won't be laughed at. It seems to me only the privileged few are accorded with such license to be arrogant.

[MorpheusSandman]

I don't think you understood the exclusive nature of poetic license. Try writing poems like those, let's see if you won't be laughed at. It seems to me only the privileged few are accorded with such license to be arrogant.Well, of course, I haven't established myself a major poet. Major artists DO get license to experiment and push the envelope more. However, the same "license" you see as arrogance in the Villa pieces is also the same "license" that allowed Milton to rewrite Genesis as an epic in blank verse in the most heightened, convoluted diction and syntax imaginable. Really, that endeavor reeks of "arrogance" as well, but sometimes arrogance is needed to accomplish such endeavors and create enduring masterpieces. Wagner arguably hadn't even earned the license to conceive and write his Ring Cycle (a 4-part opera totaling about 15 hours requiring multiple days and its own custom built theater? Is that not arrogance?). I'm just saying that not ALL poetic license is about arrogance or ignorance or even a critique on the quality that the potential ignorance and/or arrogance produces.

[miyako73]

Artistic and poetic licenses to established artists and writers only is not always the case. Remember Basquiat? His aesthetics anchored on artistic license was celebrated and written about in art journals after he stalked, befriended, and joined Andy Warhol. What does that tell you?

Artistic or poetic license is not democratic--the antithesis of what literature or arts should be: open to all poets and artists, established or not. Why Basquiat and Villa only? How about the doodles of a 5th grader in an art class or the recipe of someone's grandmother written in a beautiful prose?

[MorpheusSandman]

It seems pretty democratic to me. Just as admirers of Villa are free to declare Emperor's New Sonnet genius, you're free to declare it crap. Critical trends aren't static, they change over time. Poetic license is granted or invoked in certain circles by certain individuals based on how much they like what any given artist is doing. Any artist is, essentially, free to do whatever they like, and audiences are free to like it and grant them their license, or dislike it and not.

[miyako73]

By the way, it has been suggested that Villa mocked "poetic license" in those poems. His real poems--those with forms and texts--are brilliant but rarely talked about. Here's one of my favorites written in the forties maybe in New York.


Lyric 17

I can no more hear Love’s
Voice. No more moves
The mouth of her. Birds
No more sing. Words
I speak return lonely.
Flowers I pick turn ghostly.
Fire that I burn glows
Pale. No more blows
The wind. Time tells
No more truth. Bells
Ring no more in me.
I am all alone singly.
Lonely rests my head.
—O my God! I am dead.

[cacian]

Morpheus, I cited a real, published poem as an example of poetic license as literary arrogance.

A national poet in my country named Jose Garcia Villa, who was a friend of E.E. Cummings, wrote the following poems in the 60's:



The Emperor's New Sonnet

























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

The Bashful One








,







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

http://i1311.photobucket.com/albums/s672/miyako1973/d043aac1-9cf0-4bca-9e8f-449ee4850de5_zpsa3496136.jpg (http://s1311.photobucket.com/user/miyako1973/media/d043aac1-9cf0-4bca-9e8f-449ee4850de5_zpsa3496136.jpg.html)






--------------------------
When he was criticized, his simple answer was: POETIC LICENSE.

criticised? there is nothing to critique
the other thing to write nothing/no words is not poetic licence. you need words in order to express a poetic licence. I see no words.

[cacian]

[
QUOTE=miyako73;1251284]Oh, I forgot this one, another "poem" by Villa:


http://i1311.photobucket.com/albums/s672/miyako1973/7e72bcc4-2e6a-416c-be87-9bb353432608_zps6509952e.gif (http://s1311.photobucket.com/user/miyako1973/media/7e72bcc4-2e6a-416c-be87-9bb353432608_zps6509952e.gif.html)

By the way what a loads of bubbles. ONE would have sufficed.it is worrying to see one needs more then one of the same to express nothing, repetitive is of the order here and what's more of the same thing. I think it is saying something.
oh and that is not a dot that is a circle. that is a dot .

[cacian]

I don't think you understood the exclusive nature of poetic license. Try writing poems like those, let's see if you won't be laughed at. It seems to me only the privileged few are accorded with such license to be arrogant.

exactly. write something to claim poetic licence.

[cacian]

By the way, it has been suggested that Villa mocked "poetic license" in those poems. His real poems--those with forms and texts--are brilliant but rarely talked about. Here's one of my favorites written in the forties maybe in New York.


Lyric 17

I can no more hear Love’s
Voice. No more moves
The mouth of her. Birds
No more sing. Words
I speak return lonely.
Flowers I pick turn ghostly.
Fire that I burn glows
Pale. No more blows
The wind. Time tells
No more truth. Bells
Ring no more in me.
I am all alone singly.
Lonely rests my head.
—O my God! I am dead.

why do like this one? there is no emotion in there. there is a lot of motion though.

[miyako73]

There are four poems in that piece. The first is the original one. Second, arranged as complete sentences with periods. Third, original with commas replacing inner periods. Fourth, subtext-you will only know if you read his other poems and short stories.



Second poem:

I can no more hear Love’s voice.
No more moves the mouth of her.
Birds no more sing.
Words I speak return lonely.
Flowers I pick turn ghostly.
Fire that I burn glows pale.
No more blows the wind.
Time tells no more truth.
Bells ring no more in me.
I am all alone singly.
Lonely rests my head.
—O my God! I am dead.

Third Poem

Lyric 17

I can no more hear Love’s.
Voice no more moves.
The mouth of her, birds.
No more sing, words.
I speak, return lonely.
Flowers I pick turn ghostly.
Fire that I burn glows.
Pale, no more blows.
The wind time tells.
No more truth, bells.
Ring no more in me.
I am all alone singly.
Lonely rests my head.
—O my God! I am dead.

[Lokasenna]

criticised? there is nothing to critique
the other thing to write nothing/no words is not poetic licence. you need words in order to express a poetic licence. I see no words.

Hello Pot, have you met Kettle? He's black too...

An amusing comment coming from you. Actually, I think the 'poems' that Miyako posted are quite clever - some thought has gone into them, unlike some people's poetry. Sometimes you can say a lot with no words... and sometimes you can have a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

[sandy14]

You don't always need words. The concrete and sound poetry of Bob Cobbing, Peter Finch Ernst Jandl and Kurt Schitters show this. Not all of it is easy to read, or understand, but it is there. You don't have to like it, but there is poetry in it.

The sonnet in Polka dots reduces the Sonnet to the most basic form. The organisation of the space between the 8th and 9th line shows there is a difference between the two verses. The way the dots are organised to show the rhyme scheme as well. It reduces the sonnet to the bare bones - I like it. Does the form make the poem, or the

Poems do not have to have words - even poems using words add effects by organising the words on the page in unconventional ways. If we can create meaning with the white space between the words, and by organising the poems into shapes (Coroso's Bomb), then why can't we manipulate the shapes that form the letters too?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixgbtOcEgXg

[cacian]

Hello Pot, have you met Kettle? He's black too...

An amusing comment coming from you. Actually, I think the 'poems' that Miyako posted are quite clever - some thought has gone into them, unlike some people's poetry. Sometimes you can say a lot with no words... and sometimes you can have a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

I assume that in order to apply a licence a soluble act is necessary. not putting words is doing nothing.
in order for something to be reprimanded acted upon there has to have an act. how does one pass judgement on a blank space?
for example:
I cannot get a driving licence if I did not drive a car. the same would apply to poetic licence in my opinions.

[cacian]

You don't always need words. The concrete and sound poetry of Bob Cobbing, Peter Finch Ernst Jandl and Kurt Schitters show this. Not all of it is easy to read, or understand, but it is there. You don't have to like it, but there is poetry in it.

The sonnet in Polka dots reduces the Sonnet to the most basic form. The organisation of the space between the 8th and 9th line shows there is a difference between the two verses. The way the dots are organised to show the rhyme scheme as well. It reduces the sonnet to the bare bones - I like it. Does the form make the poem, or the

Poems do not have to have words - even poems using words add effects by organising the words on the page in unconventional ways. If we can create meaning with the white space between the words, and by organising the poems into shapes (Coroso's Bomb), then why can't we manipulate the shapes that form the letters too?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixgbtOcEgXg

hi sandt14 I have to admit I have no understanding of blank spaces with '' titles''and what they are meant to do. they do nothing to me that is the effect they have on me.
the issue I have with these blanks notices is that if you are going to use no words then no titles should be induced either.
to put a title is to begin using words then to use nothing after that is contradictive to what blank space mean.
nothing means nothing. no title no words no dots. that is the definition or concept of nothing.
in other words so if you are to say/express nothing then nothing is just that. no words whatsoever from beginning till the end.
silent is another way of putting it.

[JBI]

You guys just don't appreciate the concept. Of course nobody is going to rank these conceptual works as the best of anything, but they stand in for the movement toward the liberation of text from norms. The same way we can have quite, and just by being quiet, it persists and is still debated today, despite being 4 minutes of nothing.

As for the two poems posted above, they are the same idea. Gu Cheng wrote a poem describing lines scribbled on a piece of paper, and Duchamp put a urinal on display. The idea is that such notions break rules, but this has nothing to do with poetic license. This has to do with a debate over conceptual art.

That being said, the poetic license is more along the smaller lines. Like in Leda and the Swan, Yeats adding an extra foot, or Milton in his famous Sonnet on his blindness moving his volta into the middle of a line. Such changes work, yet go against the rules, and as artists they know the ground upon which they can challenge such rules.

It's simple - you know the rules well, and then you feel comfortable enough to push them or break them to add or develop your work. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it really doesn't. The point though is that one need not be completely shackled by the rules, and there is a freedom of sorts to break such rules.

Now, I am not going to engage the responses of one member directly, as I no longer address such poster, but I will say do not let such fringe examples become the conversation. It's rather a simple concept that even people who play by the rules of forms can break such forms as they see fit (such as Wilbur putting a slant rhyme at the end of The Catch). It's their freedom to do so, and ours as readers to interpret whether it works for us or not, or whether we appreciate it or not.

The same way such Emperor's New Clothes Poems deliberately tell us to tell the poet that his work is garbage, and therefore engage in the debate. Generally the idea is clear - All the smart people will say how genius the blank poem is, yet all the stupid people will catch on that it has no meaning - it is a verbal sort of pun. Which, though I don't like, I can at least appreciate as a sort of intellectual question of poetic art.

[miyako73]

The thing he, the person who does not want to be mentioned, is talking about is not poetic license. It is called "language or linguistic or poetic or literary invention--that I like.

Like this: "No more the lips, gone the words, the dead birds" That's not poetic license. That's literature.

Imagine poetry is painting. Check this out:

http://i1311.photobucket.com/albums/s672/miyako1973/60c1cea6-7262-4e58-b9ca-e294acbec818_zps12aed680.jpg (http://s1311.photobucket.com/user/miyako1973/media/60c1cea6-7262-4e58-b9ca-e294acbec818_zps12aed680.jpg.html)

It's Bart Simpson. It has been established already that the guy could not draw a clean human figure. My nephew's colored doodles on wii udraw are way way better than that. That piece right there is artistic license. Now translate that to poetry.