the worst poem you have ever read [Archive]

Mohammad Ahmad

10-22-2014, 01:45 PM

Everyone should write best and bad, however, to evaluate poem is on a reader side, but this doesn't mean who once writes a bad poem forever he is bad.
Conflict and inspiration sometimes are present on a poet mind sometimes not, thus not always the poet is ready to write a poem, but he can write one verse or two verses other who is not well familiar in poetry cannot.
This poem of a well-known English poet William Black doesn't admire me although many people love it because of its very simple words
I was angry with my friend, I told my wrath to find end! to which extent it should be ended? then he was grown in anger to be as a poisoned tree, if we compare it with Shakespearean poems it is nothing

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears
Night and morning with my tears,
And I sunned it with smiles
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright,
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine -

And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning, glad, I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

108 fountains

10-22-2014, 02:40 PM

Well, it made no sense (to me), but the reader is expected to waste time trying to make sense out of it especially since it is famous.

Also, nothing, rather than so much, depends upon that wheelbarrow or those chickens or the rain.

Also, I kind of like getting my butt kicked for not liking it.

I like the imagery in all of Williams’ poetry. Interpreting/understanding him can be difficult because so much of what he writes is based on or inspired by events or objects in his personal life that the reader would have no way of knowing about, unless he/she was familiar with the background (– one thing that Google is good for!).

His inspiration for The Red Wheelbarrow was, in fact, a red wheel barrow in the backyard of an old Negro fisherman whom he knew. Similarly his poem Young Sycamore was based on a photograph called Spring Showers – New York by a friend of his, Alfred Stiegliz. I never could figure out what he meant by the lines

between the wet
pavement and the gutter

I thought it had some sort of symbolic meaning until I saw the photograph, and then I realized that he was just literally describing what was in the photograph (although there still may be some symbolism to it). The influence was bi-directional. Another of William’s friends, Charles Demuth, painted his famous The Figure Five in Gold after being inspired by another Williams’ poem, The Great Figure.

108 fountains

10-22-2014, 02:43 PM

The worst poems I have ever read were ones written by myself. I posted a couple of them on LitNet, and they got the comments they deserved. :smile5: I've pretty much given up poetry now for short stories.

Poetaster

10-22-2014, 03:48 PM

I don't have a single poem in mind, but the type of poem I really hate is the sort of pretentious, free verse drivel that is only produced by people (I think) that are trying too hard to create 'art'. The sort I mean is the sort that would go something like this:

El Notche del cabre!!!!?!

I walked into the moonlit night

And met a woman who was getting her sustenance from bins
she said
'I can taste rainbows when I hold my nose in the air
and point downwards
into abysses
like

Dante's peak,
and with glass bottom chocolates'

i wondered if
(Cui dono lepidum novum libellum)

I had invented time
And thought I could see all of creation

at the end of a
beer soaked night.

?

Trampoline
dreams

I
me
I

!

in a shopping market I

there was a bang and

(Arma vamque cano)

buscuits.

Ecurb

10-22-2014, 04:29 PM

I like "The Red Wheelbarrow". Why (I wonder) does "so much depend" on it? However, I also like the concept looking not for merely bad poems (they are myriad), but for famous poems one dislikes. I once had an argument with my mother about one of her favorite poems, "Pied Beauty" by Gerard Manly Hopkins. Here's the poem:

GLORY be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

My side of the argument went something like this:

Lay off the "dappled things", Gerard. What's wrong with plain, unvariegated color? Also, why compare the spots on a trout to a technique in painting, if we want to wonder at God's beauty? Shouldn't the comparison be made the other way around? Isn’t the artist’s brush a poor imitation of God’s handiwork?

I love "Spring and Fall", although when I read it as a young boy I had no idea what it meant, and didn't even have the slightest notion what "unleaving" referred to. In fact, I thought that “unleaving” meant “staying”. I liked the sounds, though.

But "Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)" seems to me to be the worst of Hopkins - cloying, cute (who knows how), and worshiping diversity and dappling just because they can be sentimentally admired in alliterative, clever lines.

Hopkins’ talent -- the skill with words, the alliteration -- is wonderful. However, I can't really buy "...For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow..." I suppose one can picture this image, if one tries hard enough, but it is forced. I can't imagine myself looking at the sky and saying, "Hmmm, looks like a brinded cow." Or if I did say that, it would be a bit like seeing "duckies" or "horsies" in the clouds.

I can’t really blame my Mom for liking “Pied Beauty”. She had freckles. But Wallace Stevens once said that, “sentimentality is a failure of feeling.” I like dappled things as much as the next person, but it seems mere sentimentality to glorify the strange over the ordinary, the fickle over the constant, and stippling over a strong, steady stroke of the brush.

PeterL

10-22-2014, 05:45 PM

I hate it so much when people think crap like 'The Desiderata' is poetry. But how can you educate these people?

I never saw that before, but it's no worse than "The Leaves of Grass", and many people think that's good poetry.
http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~gongsu/desiderata_textonly.html

PeterL

10-22-2014, 06:06 PM

Then there's William Topaz McGonagall, poet and tragedian of Dundee, has been widely hailed as the writer of the worst poetry in the English language.
http://www.mcgonagall-online.org.uk/
try:
http://www.mcgonagall-online.org.uk/gems/the-river-of-leith
or
http://www.mcgonagall-online.org.uk/gems/the-tay-bridge-disaster

The Tay Bridge Disaster may be his most noteworthy. Read it and see why.

AuntShecky

10-22-2014, 06:17 PM

It may be apocrypal, but the "back story" I heard about "The Red Wheelbarrow" drew upon Williams's occupation as a pediatrician and that one of his young patients found the scene outside the window of his sickroom to be somethat comforting. I didn't hear the story until decades after I'd first read the poem, but I don't believe knowing the impetus of the piece really affects it one way or the other.

The poems I can't stand are those that are tailor-made for mainstream middle-brow tastes, banal and safe and bland. I also resent poems that are over-rated. Please "Google" critical comments on Joyce Kilmer's poem "Trees," as well as this piece on a great Robert Frost poem that is woefully misinterpreted by American educators:

Why High School Teachers Can’t Read Poetry by John Kilgore

http://www.thescreamonline.com/essays/essays08-01/poetry.html

YesNo

10-23-2014, 01:55 AM

I like the imagery in all of Williams’ poetry.

I don't know much about Williams' poetry, so I really can't complain about it.

However, as far as imagery goes, I suspect I would get more out of shuffling a tarot deck and interpreting what pops up in a Celtic cross spread than I would in trying to make sense out of the images that are supposed to be in poetry.

I never could figure out what he meant by the lines

between the wet
pavement and the gutter

I thought it had some sort of symbolic meaning until I saw the photograph, and then I realized that he was just literally describing what was in the photograph (although there still may be some symbolism to it).

Me neither, but you are probably right about there being nothing more to it than what a literal interpretation would offer.

YesNo

10-23-2014, 02:06 AM

I like "The Red Wheelbarrow". Why (I wonder) does "so much depend" on it? However, I also like the concept looking not for merely bad poems (they are myriad), but for famous poems one dislikes. I once had an argument with my mother about one of her favorite poems, "Pied Beauty" by Gerard Manly Hopkins.
....

My side of the argument went something like this:

Lay off the "dappled things", Gerard. What's wrong with plain, unvariegated color? Also, why compare the spots on a trout to a technique in painting, if we want to wonder at God's beauty? Shouldn't the comparison be made the other way around? Isn’t the artist’s brush a poor imitation of God’s handiwork?

I love "Spring and Fall", although when I read it as a young boy I had no idea what it meant, and didn't even have the slightest notion what "unleaving" referred to. In fact, I thought that “unleaving” meant “staying”. I liked the sounds, though.

But "Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)" seems to me to be the worst of Hopkins - cloying, cute (who knows how), and worshiping diversity and dappling just because they can be sentimentally admired in alliterative, clever lines.

Hopkins’ talent -- the skill with words, the alliteration -- is wonderful. However, I can't really buy "...For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow..." I suppose one can picture this image, if one tries hard enough, but it is forced. I can't imagine myself looking at the sky and saying, "Hmmm, looks like a brinded cow." Or if I did say that, it would be a bit like seeing "duckies" or "horsies" in the clouds.

I can’t really blame my Mom for liking “Pied Beauty”. She had freckles. But Wallace Stevens once said that, “sentimentality is a failure of feeling.” I like dappled things as much as the next person, but it seems mere sentimentality to glorify the strange over the ordinary, the fickle over the constant, and stippling over a strong, steady stroke of the brush.

"Pied Beauty" doesn't bother me. I like the sound of it even though I have no clue what a dappled thing or a brinded cow might be, nor do I care to find out. My favorite Hopkin's poem is the one that starts "Margaret, are you grieving?"

But "brush"? A poem is made out of words, not paint. It is about sound, not images.

Having said that I don't like many of the limericks that Edward Lear wrote even though they have an acceptable sound to them. I would consider them among the worst, but famous, poems I have ever read. Of course his poem about the owl and pussy cat was brilliant.

YesNo

10-23-2014, 02:25 AM

I never saw that before, but it's no worse than "The Leaves of Grass", and many people think that's good poetry.
http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~gongsu/desiderata_textonly.html

I had to look up Max Ehrmann's "Desiderata". I don't recall hearing it before, but it seems like reasonable advice. I agree that Leaves of Grass would put me to sleep faster, but then it is longer.

YesNo

10-23-2014, 02:33 AM

I don't have a single poem in mind, but the type of poem I really hate is the sort of pretentious, free verse drivel that is only produced by people (I think) that are trying too hard to create 'art'.

I love hating that kind of poetry, but what are you going to do when someone you know offers you something like that hoping that you will be the first person to truly appreciate it?

Poetaster

10-23-2014, 02:55 AM

I love hating that kind of poetry, but what are you going to do when someone you know offers you something like that hoping that you will be the first person to truly appreciate it?

I hate loving that kind of poetry. It's a good question, I honestly don't know. Knowing me, in all my typical Britishness, I'd likely not say I hated it to their face. I don't like what that says about me however.

cacian

10-23-2014, 07:23 AM

cacian

10-23-2014, 07:25 AM

*
I don't have a single poem in mind, but the type of poem I really hate is the sort of pretentious, free verse drivel that is only produced by people (I think) that are trying too hard to create 'art'. The sort I mean is the sort that would go something like this:

El Notche del cabre!!!!?!

I walked into the moonlit night

And met a woman who was getting her sustenance from bins
she said
'I can taste rainbows when I hold my nose in the air
and point downwards
into abysses
like

Dante's peak,
and with glass bottom chocolates'

i wondered if
(Cui dono lepidum novum libellum)

I had invented time
And thought I could see all of creation

at the end of a
beer soaked night.

?

Trampoline
dreams

I
me
I

!

in a shopping market I

there was a bang and

(Arma vamque cano)

buscuits.

yep this reminds of poem made up of punctuation.
like this:

....
::::::::
)(*
^%$£
~?????
!!!!!
'

Ecurb

10-23-2014, 10:00 AM

"Pied Beauty" doesn't bother me. I like the sound of it even though I have no clue what a dappled thing or a brinded cow might be, nor do I care to find out. My favorite Hopkin's poem is the one that starts "Margaret, are you grieving?"

But "brush"? A poem is made out of words, not paint. It is about sound, not images.

.

No doubt Hopkins' poems all sound great. My comment about brush strokes referred to Hopkins line "For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim". "Stippling" is a technique in painting in which the painter produces "dappled" (spotted with color or light) things with points or very short slashes of paint. I just thought it strange that Hopkins, who quit writing poetry to become a Jesuit priest, would compare the handiwork of God to that of a human painter, when it seems to me the human painter is trying to imitate the Master.

"Spring and Fall (to a young child)", which I referenced, is the Hopkins poem that begins "Margaret are you grieving over Goldengrove unleaving..." As a child, I liked the sound of the poem so much (it was also one of my mother's favorite poems) that I memorized it, although I was unaware that "goldengrove unleaving" referred to the golden leaves falling from the trees in autumn. For years I thought "unleaving" meant "staying".

Please "Google" critical comments on Joyce Kilmer's poem "Trees," as well as this piece on a great Robert Frost poem that is woefully misinterpreted by American educators:

Why High School Teachers Can’t Read Poetry by John Kilgore

http://www.thescreamonline.com/essays/essays08-01/poetry.html

Nice article. My high school teachers definitely tried to make me dislike "literary" novels, constantly talking about "moral themes" and such. Teaching is a tough gig, though. If high school kids can identify with the individualistic glory of taking "the road less traveled by", perhaps that will spur them to look more deeply both into the poem and at the diverging roads, and discover that the travelers "Had worn them really about the same."

YesNo

10-24-2014, 08:49 AM

No doubt Hopkins' poems all sound great. My comment about brush strokes referred to Hopkins line "For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim". "Stippling" is a technique in painting in which the painter produces "dappled" (spotted with color or light) things with points or very short slashes of paint. I just thought it strange that Hopkins, who quit writing poetry to become a Jesuit priest, would compare the handiwork of God to that of a human painter, when it seems to me the human painter is trying to imitate the Master.

I don't know what was going through Hopkin's mind when he stopped writing poetry to became a priest. It doesn't make sense to me. But we can discuss theology in another thread.

What interests me about poetry is that some people think there are "images" in it. All I see in poetry are words and words imply sound and meaning. I don't see any images except by accident when the publisher puts in an illustration by the poem.

"Spring and Fall (to a young child)", which I referenced, is the Hopkins poem that begins "Margaret are you grieving over Goldengrove unleaving..." As a child, I liked the sound of the poem so much (it was also one of my mother's favorite poems) that I memorized it, although I was unaware that "goldengrove unleaving" referred to the golden leaves falling from the trees in autumn. For years I thought "unleaving" meant "staying".

I also memorized the poem, but I heard about it first as an undergraduate. I do remember my mother reciting nursery rhymes. I don't think she knew who Hopkins was.

Nice article. My high school teachers definitely tried to make me dislike "literary" novels, constantly talking about "moral themes" and such. Teaching is a tough gig, though. If high school kids can identify with the individualistic glory of taking "the road less traveled by", perhaps that will spur them to look more deeply both into the poem and at the diverging roads, and discover that the travelers "Had worn them really about the same."

Here's something I didn't like about John Kilgore's article. He wrote: http://www.thescreamonline.com/essays/essays08-01/poetry.html

A discovery one makes periodically as a college teacher is that the rare student who declares himself a poetry-lover can be more of a problem than the professed poetry-hater. Both declarations suggest the student has hardly an inkling of the vast range of different things that can be meant by the single term "poetry"; but the poetry-hater at least knows she doesn't know.

Here he is mistaken. The poetry hater does not know she doesn't know. She knows. And she's bored. That's worse than hate.

Considering the unpleasant sounding, deliberately meaningless horse manure I have read as poetry, that nonetheless gets praised as something great, I am tempted to think she shows signs of mental health. That same poetry hater probably loves, loves, loves movies and songs.

That's why I offered "The Red Wheelbarrow" as one of my candidates for the worst poem I have ever read. I have many others.

Ecurb

10-24-2014, 11:06 AM

To each his own, YesNo. However, I will point out that Joseph Conrad wrote, "My task is to make you hear, to make you feel,and, above all, to make you see." I understand your distaste for "Red Wheel Barrow" if you don't like visual poems. That poem is a little like a black and white photograph with a glistening, red wheel barrow, in brilliant color, in the middle of it. Perhaps "so much depends" on the red wheel barrow simply poetically -- there would be no poem without it.

Many poems aren't dependent on visual images, but many are. Alfred Noyes writes in his Highwayman:

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,

The reader is transported to the barren, purple heath, looking out over the emptiness at the bright, twisting road, meandering like a swirling ribbon, as the movement of the clouds makes the moon appear to bob up and down like a small ship on a stormy sea. The swirling sounds of the introduction to the poem augment this image.

Think of other famous poems. Take Shelley's Ode to the West Wind

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing....

The simile comparing the leaves to ghosts adds to the sense of mystery and wonder at the West Wind, but it also creates a clear and dramatic visual image of the leaves scampering erratically across the ground, as if they had a mind of their own.

It is true that when Kingsley Amis was asked to give advice to a young novelist, he said, "Never mention clouds." Drama is essentially human -- and visualizing the setting is often peripheral to it.

I'm not sure why Hopkins quit poetry when he became a priest. I think he thought he was too busy to do both. I read a novel called "Exiles" about Hopkins quitting poetry, and then returning to it to write a long poem about some Catholic nuns exiled from Germany by Bismark. They were drowned off the English coast in a ship wreck. Hopkins died young a year or two after returning to poetry. Here's a link to the poem (warning: its long and difficult):http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173668

desiresjab

10-27-2014, 05:03 PM

PeterL

10-27-2014, 06:20 PM

Wow! You are right. This may be the worst poem (Tay Bridge). Incredible. I can just see him after the last revision, leaning back for a well earned smoke.

Yeah! Tay Bridge is amazing. And he probably thought it was good. I once tried to write a little bad poetry, and try as I did it didn't approach Tay Bridge.

YesNo

10-28-2014, 01:57 AM

Many poems aren't dependent on visual images, but many are. Alfred Noyes writes in his Highwayman:

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,

The reader is transported to the barren, purple heath, looking out over the emptiness at the bright, twisting road, meandering like a swirling ribbon, as the movement of the clouds makes the moon appear to bob up and down like a small ship on a stormy sea. The swirling sounds of the introduction to the poem augment this image.

I don't see any image in that example. How many trees were there? What sort of clouds were in the sky? Did the road cut across horizontally or was it skewed somewhat? If you had an image, you would know all of this and much more.

What you have with a poem is more interesting. You have sound and meaning. An illustrator might add an image to the text, but the text itself is composed of words that are represented as sounds. The coding of it in a script is just a storage mechanism.

Or let's take the red wheelbarrow poem that I think is one of the worst poems I have ever read primarily because of the hype around it. If it contained images you would know how many chickens there were. You would know where the wheelbarrow was in the yard or what building it was against. You would know what shade of red it was. Any image would give you this visual information. Since you don't have that information, you don't have an image.

When it comes to visual information a picture is worth far more than a thousand words. And the information is delivered quickly.

I was at a used book store on Saturday. The owner had over 40 different editions of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam for sale. He told me that he had three times that many at the height of his collecting interest. Overall he estimated that there were a thousand editions of that poem. People would buy the texts not just for the words but also for the images that an artist would add, not the poet.

Ecurb

10-28-2014, 11:01 AM

Pablo Picasso supposedly met an American G.I. who told him he didn't like modern paintings because they were not realistic. To illustrate his point, the GI showed Picasso a photo of his girlfriend. "My," said Picasso, "Is she really so small?"

Of course visual art provides an "image", while the reader of poetry must create his own image, based on the descriptions in the poem. "Ode to the West Wind" describes the skittering leaves, but the details of the terrain through which the leaves flee their imaginary enchanter are missing. In a sense, this makes poetry-reading a more "creative" endeavor than looking at snapshots. The images one "sees" are created from a collaboration of the poet and the reader. The serious reader is REQUIRED to imagine "skies of couple colour as a brinded cow", however unusual the image. Sometimes this works (artistically), sometimes it doesn't. In your case, Red Wheel Barrow didn't help you create a striking image; for a great many sophisticated readers, it does.

YesNo

10-28-2014, 09:56 PM

I am almost tempted to look up "brinded cow".

There are many readers who visualize better than I do. But I assume any image that is visualized in the reader's mind is in the reader's mind and not in the poem.

It is not just poetry. Words do not form images whether those words are in a poem or a story or even on a map as a place name. Words take time to read. Images are immediate. Words use sound. Images use vision. I am almost tempted to say that words mean something or are about something while an image need not be.

Suppose you looked at a photograph and said, "There are a lot of nice sounds in that picture."

Do you have any other poems that would be good candidates for "the worst poem you have ever read"? I might as well add this one by Ezra Pound, "In a Station of the Metro": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_a_Station_of_the_Metro I am just picking up famous poems that I think are overrated.

It does have a near rhyme between "croud" and "bough" which is the only thing that makes it interesting to me.

Poetaster

10-29-2014, 05:01 AM

cacian

10-29-2014, 06:47 AM

There are many readers who visualize better than I do. But I assume any image that is visualized in the reader's mind is in the reader's mind and not in the poem.
I cant visualise when I read I have never done and never will. I usually go with the sound or the meaning but never the image.

PeterL

10-29-2014, 07:30 AM

I am almost tempted to look up "brinded cow".

There are many readers who visualize better than I do. But I assume any image that is visualized in the reader's mind is in the reader's mind and not in the poem.

It is not just poetry. Words do not form images whether those words are in a poem or a story or even on a map as a place name. Words take time to read. Images are immediate. Words use sound. Images use vision. I am almost tempted to say that words mean something or are about something while an image need not be.

Suppose you looked at a photograph and said, "There are a lot of nice sounds in that picture."

One word is worth a thousand pictures, if the word is right. If you don't know what "brindled" (not brinded) means, then the idea of a drindle cow doesn't mean much to you, but the expected audience would have known what a brindled cow looked like, so it worked for many people.

Ecurb

10-29-2014, 10:58 AM

Do words "form images"? Of course they do, although the reader must participate in the formation of those images. When we teach children how to speak, we point at a shoe and say, "Shoe". The correlation of the word and the image (as well as the way the shoe feels, etc.) is what causes the word to have meaning.

Here's Pound's poem:

106. In a Station of the Metro

THE apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

The image painted by the poem is based on comparing the "apparition" of faces in the crowd to petals. The poem is a Hokku (Japanese form), so when I read it I think the apparition of the faces (in other words, the ghostly image of the faces, rather than the actual faces) resemble petals in a Japanese painting, or, perhaps, in a formal Japanese garden. The image is striking because the hustle and bustle of the Metro seems (at first) so different from the quiet formality of a Japanese painting, or silk embroidery, or garden. But the reader is required by the poem to see not the differences, but the similarities. Since the faces are "apparitions", rather than real faces, one can imagine them to look quite a bit like petals in a painting.

There are other, non-visual qualities to the comparison. Do the apparitions of the faces represent a detachment on the part of the reader (viewer)? Are they somehow unhuman, because of this detachment? Why is the bough wet and black? I don't have the answers, but the image of a subway crowd creating a vision resembling petals is a striking one, and the key quality of the poem.

108 fountains

10-29-2014, 11:05 AM

I cant visualise when I read I have never done and never will. I usually go with the sound or the meaning but never the image.

I think it is fascinating that you and YesNo read in sounds and not in images. For me, when I read prose, it is like watching a movie - I see the moving images, and the only sounds I hear are what is written in the dialogue or described as sound in the xposition. When I read a poem, I create a picture in my mind, which is why I tend to like poems with imagery and not care much for poetry without imagery. I tend to agree with Edcurb that the creation of images is a kind of collaboration between author and reader, and that the art of the author is in choosing the best words to help the reader in the collaboration.

In an earlier post, Ecurb quoted from The Highwayman:

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,

To me, each line conjured up a vivid image, and I found it hard to believe that you and YesNo don't see them, too. I guess it just goes to show that people's brains work in different ways. I've always been interested in the human brain and probably should have studied psychology. I have heard of people who can look at a sheet of music and actually hear the sounds. I can't do that, but I do have this ability to hear music in my head - I mean, really actually hear it when I concentrate. Once, just out of curiosity, I lay on the sofa and "played" the second side of the Beatles' Abbey Road album in my head and timed myself. Then when I checked the length of the actual recording, I was only off by eight seconds.

YesNo

10-29-2014, 02:59 PM

One word is worth a thousand pictures, if the word is right. If you don't know what "brindled" (not brinded) means, then the idea of a drindle cow doesn't mean much to you, but the expected audience would have known what a brindled cow looked like, so it worked for many people.

But one word isn't a thousand pictures.

Since I don't know, nor care to know, what a drindled, brindled, or brinded cow is, the poem that uses the word has to interest me by its sound. If the meaning is weak, the sound must compensate.

YesNo

10-29-2014, 03:26 PM

I think it is fascinating that you and YesNo read in sounds and not in images. For me, when I read prose, it is like watching a movie - I see the moving images, and the only sounds I hear are what is written in the dialogue or described as sound in the xposition. When I read a poem, I create a picture in my mind, which is why I tend to like poems with imagery and not care much for poetry without imagery. I tend to agree with Edcurb that the creation of images is a kind of collaboration between author and reader, and that the art of the author is in choosing the best words to help the reader in the collaboration.

In an earlier post, Ecurb quoted from The Highwayman:

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,

To me, each line conjured up a vivid image, and I found it hard to believe that you and YesNo don't see them, too. I guess it just goes to show that people's brains work in different ways. I've always been interested in the human brain and probably should have studied psychology. I have heard of people who can look at a sheet and actually hear the sounds. I can't do that, but I do have this ability to hear music in my head - I mean, really actually hear it when I concentrate. Once, just out of curiosity, I lay on the sofa and "played" the second side of the Beatles' Abbey Road album in my head and timed myself. Then when I checked the length of the actual recording, I was only off by eight seconds.

I do hear sounds more clearly than I visualize images. There are meditation techniques that I have tried suggesting that I visualize a white light entering my body (or leaving it) and I can pretend I am seeing something like that, but I don't see anything.

But is that the point? The question is not whether I hear sounds or see images in my mind when I am reading. The question is whether those images are in the words? And if they are, those images should be similar no matter who is reading the text. If PeterL sees a brinded cow and I see a Cheshire cat, the images aren't the same. If you see ten gusty trees and I, trying hard, see two, the images are not similar enough to say they are in the text and not just something we are making up.

It is like asking something like this: Are there sounds in that photograph? Sure, if there are birds flying in the photograph, "The Bird is the Word" song might go through my mind, but just because that happens, and I hope it doesn't, it doesn't mean that song is in the photograph. It is in my mind.

108 fountains

10-29-2014, 04:59 PM

That all makes sense, but on the other hand, I did not have an image in my mind of leaves rustling and branches swaying in the wind in a dark forest at night until I read the line, "The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees." So there must be something in the words even if they might not convey the exact image to different readers.

YesNo

10-29-2014, 10:16 PM

The words are about wind rustling and branches swaying. That would be their meaning. The sound is how this idea is delivered to you. Since both of us understand it, there must be a communal aspect to this, something that we share, or we couldn't use words to communicate.

I wonder if an image, unless it is a symbol or mandala of some sort, is only about itself rather than something else. Languages aren't created out of images although I suspect the imagists thought Chinese might be an example of that.

However, images do seem more substantial than sounds, more real. They persist through time.

Sospira

11-07-2014, 07:58 AM

I never saw that before, but it's no worse than "The Leaves of Grass", and many people think that's good poetry.
http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~gongsu/desiderata_textonly.html

Do you mean"The Leaves of Grass" poetry collection by Walt Whitman?? How can you compare Whitman with the tripe that is "The Desiderata?"

PeterL

11-07-2014, 08:19 AM

Do you mean"The Leaves of Grass" poetry collection by Walt Whitman?? How can you compare Whitman with the tripe that is "The Desiderata?"

It was very easy. Both seem to have similar form and content, and there probably are people who like both.

Sospira

11-07-2014, 08:51 AM

As for the brindled cow, is it that you don't think it's poetic? He was observationing the fractal like nature and self symmetry of nature which, after Benoit Mandelbrot's "discovery," of the Mandelbrot fractal are pretty common "knowledge" now. A cow's brindled patters are similar to patterns found elsewhere in nature, like clouds or sand dunes. There was a very interesting documentary on this, "The Secret Life of Chaos."

Hopkins thought the divine was in everything, right? So the stippling itself that the artist was doing, would be God working through the artist... I am not crazy about this poem either and prefer 'The Windhover.' But he had a thing for patterns and wrote about patterns he saw in nature in his diary, I think he saw it as the divine running through everything and forming itself in different ways, but still unified.

Ecurb

11-07-2014, 11:53 AM

I didn't want to knock Hopkins TOO much -- he's a fine poet. In fact, looking at the cloud-flecked sky the other day and remembering this thread, I thought to myself, "You know, that does look a little like a brinded cow."

Purple cows, of course, are also an excellent subject for poetry.

Sospira

11-11-2014, 09:09 AM

I had to look up Max Ehrmann's "Desiderata". I don't recall hearing it before, but it seems like reasonable advice. I agree that Leaves of Grass would put me to sleep faster, but then it is longer.

Yes maybe it is reasonable advice, but not deep, sophisticated or beautiful enough to be a 'poem.' It is just a motivational speech. But people think it's an example of poetry. So what annoys me is that people don't understand what poetry is even though they think they are 'educated' because they have a Masters degree.

YesNo

11-11-2014, 11:46 AM

There is a lot of poetry that I think is gibberish. At least this desiderata was understandable.

If we are going to have poetry and prose categories then for completeness we would need two more categories: (1) neither poetry nor prose and (2) both poetry and prose.

Sospira

11-11-2014, 01:09 PM

Words do not form images whether those words are in a poem or a story or even on a map as a place name. Words take time to read. Images are immediate. Words use sound. Images use vision. I am almost tempted to say that words mean something or are about something while an image need not be.

This is a very unusual experience of reading poetry especially considering that you enjoy poetry. Most people who enjoy poetry experience the intense conjuring of pictures even like a film, as 108fountains wrote, in their mind. One word, if chosen and placed well, can conjure up in the mind of the reader intense pictures and feelings. When I read 'The Windhover' I am there with the bird doing its somersaults in the sky, and it's like being inside an intense surround-sound movie-like experience. Some examples from 'The Windhover' of the words conjuring a picture or feeling:

'Then off, off forth on swing,' I feel the movement of the bird through the 'f' and 'ff' repetition, almost like a false start with the first 'off' before it really takes off with 'off forth on swing.'

'As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend,' here I experience it as though it were myself swerving smoothly round this 'bend.'

'...the hurl and gliding/Rebuffed the big wind...' here the '-buffed' is like a gust of wind blown in my face.

It isn't the case that words are only experienced as sounds, for me they immediately conjure a picture and/or video if the poet is skilled enough with language.

And I can think of some photos that are loud and noisy to me. Senses overlapping I think is a must to appreciate art and poetry fully.

The way you experience it, is your own experience, and you are not 'wrong' to explain your experience but you are wrong to state as a fact that words are only sounds and ideas, and cannot create images. That is your experience and it isn't the experience of most people who are poetry enthusiasts.

Sospira

11-11-2014, 04:11 PM

'THE apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.'

The image painted by the poem is based on comparing the "apparition" of faces in the crowd to petals. The poem is a Hokku (Japanese form), so when I read it I think the apparition of the faces (in other words, the ghostly image of the faces, rather than the actual faces) resemble petals in a Japanese painting, or, perhaps, in a formal Japanese garden. The image is striking because the hustle and bustle of the Metro seems (at first) so different from the quiet formality of a Japanese painting, or silk embroidery, or garden. But the reader is required by the poem to see not the differences, but the similarities. Since the faces are "apparitions", rather than real faces, one can imagine them to look quite a bit like petals in a painting.

There are other, non-visual qualities to the comparison. Do the apparitions of the faces represent a detachment on the part of the reader (viewer)? Are they somehow unhuman, because of this detachment? Why is the bough wet and black? I don't have the answers, but the image of a subway crowd creating a vision resembling petals is a striking one, and the key quality of the poem.

I would find this to be a very striking image even if it was about people walking down a countryside lane. The words themselves are so affecting and evocative. Your idea about detachment and the 'unhuman' faces is interesting, and that's how most people feel in big cities with the swarms of people around them.

The poem seems to slow and calm everything down and puts the scene of the hustle and bustle of a city metro in slow motion and on mute for me, with these eerie but delicate faces appearing out of the black ether. Why is the bough black and wet? I'd say that's a pretty good metaphorical image of their black suits dampened by the rain on a wet evening. And then maybe there's the juxtaposition of their black suits (the boughs) which represent mundane repetitive office work, formality, and conformity; and their faces which are likened to white petals, the whiteness and delicateness of which is both beautiful and ethereal but also ghostly and unhuman.

YesNo

11-11-2014, 04:22 PM

Some examples from 'The Windhover' of the words conjuring a picture or feeling:

Just to make sure we are talking about the same thing, I am only objecting to "images" and then only the images that are claimed to be in a poem. A poem can be about something which would generate an image in the mind of someone reading it. I am not concerned about those images.

The way you experience it, is your own experience, and you are not 'wrong' to explain your experience but you are wrong to state as a fact that words are only sounds and ideas, and cannot create images. That is your experience and it isn't the experience of most people who are poetry enthusiasts.

I don't see how words are anything other than sound that is about something. Being "about something" is where the "idea" comes in.

If most people experience poetry as an image, which I don't think is true, but I don't know, I suggest that would be because they were taught to use image metaphors when talking about a poem. If they liked a poem, the expected comment would be something like, "What nice images you have in your poem." A better comment would be, "What nice sounds."

My point is that those image metaphors are inappropriate and cover up the value of sound in communication.

Sospira

11-11-2014, 07:01 PM

Sospira

11-11-2014, 07:14 PM

The poems I can't stand are those that are tailor-made for mainstream middle-brow tastes, banal and safe and bland. I also resent poems that are over-rated. Please "Google" critical comments on Joyce Kilmer's poem "Trees," as well as this piece on a great Robert Frost poem that is woefully misinterpreted by American educators:

Why High School Teachers Can’t Read Poetry by John Kilgore

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Would high school or secondary school teachers (in the UK) really not see what the Robert Frost poem was about? They have been to university where their lecturers and professors would have discussed it with them, right? Or is not on university syllabuses? I don't get why the bash at teachers. Unless some teaches really are that bad?

My secondary school English teachers were excellent on the whole. I can't comment on the teaching of this poem as we didn't cover this one, but I can't imagine it would have fooled them.

YesNo

11-12-2014, 10:56 AM

Nobody's teaching made me think in terms of pictures. I am a very visual person and have been since a child where it began with intensely visual dreams. I read poetry and images form in my mind, that is simply how I have and always have experienced it. When I first read children's books as I child I felt as though I was in the book, it was such an intense experience for me. Certain passages of books, the general subject of which I can vaguely recall, still conjure intense pictures in my mind and that's up to 20 years ago.

It's not confined to poetry, when I hear music I sometimes see pictures or colours in my mind. It's an overlapping of the senses. I don't have synesthesia, but I think in pictures.

Not everyone is visually minded or thinks in pictures.

You said:
'A poem can be about something which would generate an image in the mind of someone reading it. I am not concerned about those images.'

So what images are you concerned with?

The question is whether poetry contains images. It is not whether some people experience a poem visually. Although I don't think I am a very visual person, I can visualize if I put my mind to it.

The reason I think this might have been taught, which could mean simply imitating how other people respond to a poem, is because this has been a teaching of early 20th century Imagists and later picked up by academics and when I read comments on poetry I still hear remarks on the "iimages" supposedly in a poem. I don't see any images there. The poem contains words which are sounds. True, there might be images in the reader's mind. There also might not be any images in the reader's mind or very different images depending on the reader. All that means, is the idea that there are images in a poem is not correct.

Besides, I think most people experience poetry as sound, primarily as music lyrics. They aren't reading any words. They just listen and are often moved which encourages them to repeat the experience. I don't think being moved by a song is a visual experience in general unless one is also watching a video that accompanies the song.