What makes a good poem?

[axolotl]

It's the beauty in the words, in the content? Why some people's name last and others not? Poetry is just expression with words? I read a lot of confessional poetry these days.

[YesNo]

I think poetry consists of sound and meaning. If those two are done well, then the poem is good.

I know the names of many famous poets, but I do not know a single poem they wrote. Or if I know the poem, I don't like it. It has a negative influence on me. So, just having one's name known is not enough. Examples: Pound, Plath.

I also know many poems, and enjoy them, but I do not know the names of the author. The obvious example is a nursery rhyme. I have no clue who wrote "Mary had a little lamb". Other obvious examples are song lyrics.

Then there are poets who have written at least one poem that I have memorized. Here there is positive influence. Examples: Frost, Hopkins.

[bounty]

I went to a poetry reading once and some of the people around me were in orgasmic delight, whereas most of it was lost on me.

I suppose im a troglodyte in this regard---all the other poetry writing rules out the window, I have a hard time liking it if it doesn't rhyme. there are a few exceptions to that, but boy, very few.

[Mohammad Ahmad]

You said "confessional" and that's right, to confess in something is error and not error, to confess.
In meaning or other everyone has errs, then the poetry is the stage which exposing every hidden things.
For me I don’t give a value to poem just containing arranged musical dancing words but it does not include meanings.'
The most things making the poem stresses on value when it does go around a circulated concentrated idea, and if not what value of a poem is.
Of course any poet discriminating on his own style and will be recognized to people from his print he weaved on a poem.

[Mohammad Ahmad]

There is no guarantee decision to say this good for all people because one likes to read for a certain poet other dislikes

[YesNo]

I think poetry consists of sound and meaning.

It occurred to me that I didn't describe poetry so much as language. Words are meaningful sounds and they could be used in either prose or poetry or anything in between or outside of those two categories of language.

[tonywalt]

The same as a photograph or a book: it has to move me.

[Ecurb]

Let's see: Tony Walt thinks the result of good poetry (that it "moves" him) is what makes a good poem. It seems to me that's like saying "What makes a good house is that it keeps me warm and dry", as if, first, a house that keeps someone else warm and dry doesn't qualify as "good", and, second, the result of good craftsmanship is the same as the craftsmanship. What makes a good house is good building materials, a good architectural plan, and good craftsmanship. The result: Tony (or someone else) is kept warm and dry.

Yesno, as is his usual wont, thinks good poems are made of sounds and meaning. Like his reductionist explanations of religion, this is reasonable, but utterly unhelpful. As he himself points out, all language involves sounds and meaning -- surely what makes (constitutes) a poem must differ from what constitutes other uses of language.

In addition, surely some "good poems" create an emotional responses in other people, but not in me. To define "good poetry" egocentrically seems silly --why bother defining it at all if nobody but you can understand the definition. The idea that Pound or Plath are not "good poets" because yesno (or, perhaps, Tony, or even I, who enjoy Pound but not Plath) doesn't like their poetry is ludicrous.

I have to go. More later.

[YesNo]

For what it's worth, I don't like either Pound or Plath--or Neruda for that matter.

I think Tony Walt is on to something with his claim that a good poem is what moves the reader. Although that may be subjective, it is what counts. I am not interested in whether some artificial intelligence device thinks the poem is objectively good. Someone with a real subjectivity has to like the poem.

The subjective pleasure provided by a poem suggests that an objective market approach might be useful in valuing a poem. Those poems with the most likes win. Those poets who make the most money win. There may be other ways to value the poem, but that seems to be one that objectively works and is based on the subjectivity of a collection of readers.

Of course there is more to poetry than an unconscious robot's objective assessment or some market's objective assessment. I have to admit that since I don't like a bunch of objectively successful poets, namely, Pound, Plath and Neruda. What is my basis for disliking them? I don't have any objective basis for it that I can think of at the moment although I might be able to come up with something. The primary data point is that I don't like them.

Does a subjective liking or disliking something need to be objectively justified? I don't think so.

[Ecurb]

Obviously. a good poem moves the reader. However, not all readers are Tony, or Yes No, or I. Plath, Pound and Neruda clearly move some well educated, discerning readers. The question of what makes a good poem (which I may try to answer if I have the time and energy) involves a discussion of the qualities in a poem that move readers. The essence of criticism is a discussion of art, not a discussion of oneself, just like the essence of architectural criticism is a discussion of architecture, not a litany of the extent to which you, yourself, are warm and dry.

[YesNo]

If it is obvious that a good poem moves the reader then a poem that does not move the reader must not be good.

Although there are a lot of objective things one can know about a poem and the author, the experience of the poem is what counts and that is subjective, not objective. A computer reading the poem can record a lot of objective facts about the poem, but it does not have that subjective experience.

I doubt that a poem's "goodness" can be reduced to some objective criteria. However, I also agree the goodness of a poem is not an independent, solipsistic experience because we are able to communicate with each other. It makes me think that concepts like "goodness" are part of a larger subjectivity that we participate in.

A house has more objective criteria that we can use to judge whether it was made well than a poem has. Those criteria are useful to regulate the construction of houses for the common good. Ultimately the subjective experience of living in the house is how those living in it will judge the house.

[Jack of Hearts]

If we accept the premise that words and verbal constructs are not perfect representations of reality...

Then poetry is the use of words to indirectly infer the nature of what is unspeakable.



EDIT Nearly forget, its degree of success in doing this is what makes it 'good' or not.


Also, what makes somebody's name 'last' is marketing.






J

[Ecurb]

Good grief! This discussion has taken a turn for the ridiculous!

No, yesno, it is not true that "If it is obvious that a good poem moves the reader then a poem that does not move the reader must not be good." A poem might have emotional resonance for some readers, but not others, as I thought I made clear in my previous posts. Given your reductive analyses, yesno, this should be obvious to you. Language (as you state) consists of sounds that have conventional meanings. However, Chinese doesn't have conventional meanings TO ME. The conventions are understood only by those who speak the language. Yet I wouldn't suggest that this means that Chinese is a bad language.

Therefore, if (which I haven't done) I were to read Li Po's poem "The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter" in Chinese, I would probably not find it emotionally "moving". However, when I read Ezra Pound's (loose) translation, I do find it moving.



The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter
Ezra Pound, 1885 - 1972

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.

At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the look out?

At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-yen, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.

You dragged your feet when you went out.
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
As far as Cho-fu-Sa.

By Rihaku

Would yesno or Tony insist that the Chinese version is a "bad poem"? That would be silly. As with language, knowledge and appreciation of poetry can be learned. A very young English speaker might enjoy nursery rhymes, yet fail to find "Ode on a Grecian Urn" moving (despite knowing the words). This hardly proves that nursery rhymes are better poems than "Ode".

Why do I like "River-Merchant's Wife"? I like the poignancy the wife feels in her separation from her husband. She was very young when she married him, and feels herself growing older. The butterflies have turned yellow, and this "hurts" her, reminding her of the ephemeral nature of her own life. Is the noise of the monkeys really "sorrowful", or is that how she interprets it in her loneliness?

I like the matter-of-fact conclusion: she will come to meet him where the river narrows. She is too shy to say all that she is thinking and feeling, so she hints at it. The moss has grown, and cannot be cleared away, and the history of marriage and separation cannot be cleared away, either. The wife "desires (her) dust to be mingled with yours forever and forever and forever." Is this a preference for eternity, instead of for the temporal separation? I she saying she wants death and togetherness more than a life of separation?

The structure of the poem is that of a journey from childhood (stanza 1), to adult marriage (stanza 2), to eternal love and death (stanza 3). The last two verses are a reflection on part of that journey, and an offer by the wife to journey herself (a hundred miles or more) to meet her returning husband. The offer reflects (in a reserved, Chinese way) her love, and it also suggests her despair at the passing of time, and the fact that nothing can stay the same (butterflies were once caterpillars, after all). So the poignant sentiments of the poem are enhanced by it's structure.

This is a spur-of-the-moment analysis, and not a very good one. But I'm trying to suggest that when we talk about what makes a good poem, we can talk about poems, instead of talking about ourselves. Of course criticism ALSO involves the critics reaction to the art (whether it "moves him"), but that alone is insufficient for a decent discussion.


Then poetry is the use of words to indirectly infer the nature of what is unspeakable.

Huh? Words imply, people infer.

[YesNo]

No, yesno, it is not true that "If it is obvious that a good poem moves the reader then a poem that does not move the reader must not be good." A poem might have emotional resonance for some readers, but not others, as I thought I made clear in my previous posts. Given your reductive analyses, yesno, this should be obvious to you. Language (as you state) consists of sounds that have conventional meanings. However, Chinese doesn't have conventional meanings TO ME. The conventions are understood only by those who speak the language. Yet I wouldn't suggest that this means that Chinese is a bad language.

I do admit there are good poems that do not personally move me for the same reason that I accept the existence of other people who have different subjective experiences than I have. I don't want to imply solipsism which I think is refuted by the fact that we can talk to each other and we have different points of view.

On the other hand, being subjectively moved by a poem is what counts, not anything objectively known about the poem.

What do I conclude? Our subjectivity changes. There are also many different subjective experiences which are somehow linked together enabling us to talk to each other. We can also be wrong about our assessments of a poem and change our minds later.



Therefore, if (which I haven't done) I were to read Li Po's poem "The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter" in Chinese, I would probably not find it emotionally "moving". However, when I read Ezra Pound's (loose) translation, I do find it moving.

I don't find Pound's poem moving. What does that statement imply? Is Pound's poem objectively bad? Am I insensitive because I am not moved? Are you hypersensitive for being moved?



Would yesno or Tony insist that the Chinese version is a "bad poem"? That would be silly. As with language, knowledge and appreciation of poetry can be learned. A very young English speaker might enjoy nursery rhymes, yet fail to find "Ode on a Grecian Urn" moving (despite knowing the words). This hardly proves that nursery rhymes are better poems than "Ode".

We don't even know what makes a poem "good" let alone "better" than some other poem. I suppose we could say for the young reader that the ode was not good because the young reader was not moved. Is that something wrong with the ode or with the reader or with neither?

All I can conclude is that some readers find a poem moving (good) and others don't. Is there some way to make a judgement about a poem without referencing specific readers in such a way that even readers who are not moved would have to acknowledge that they should be moved? I don't think we can.



But I'm trying to suggest that when we talk about what makes a good poem, we can talk about poems, instead of talking about ourselves.


That's my problem. To what extent can we actually claim that a poem is good without referencing someone's subjectivity?

If we could get far with talking about poems without talking about ourselves, then we should be able to objectify what is good about a poem so that we don't have to actually read the poem and find out for ourselves. Being moved would have been objectified. In other words, a computer, which can never experience the poem subjectively, would be able to discriminate enough to declare that a poem is good.

There might be a way out of this by going further into subjectivity, but I don't think going further into objectivity helps.

[YesNo]

If we accept the premise that words and verbal constructs are not perfect representations of reality...

Then poetry is the use of words to indirectly infer the nature of what is unspeakable.


That makes sense.

However, there are people who don't believe in the existence of the "unspeakable". They would claim that everything eventually can be spoken or digitized or objectified in some way. An example would be those who think in the future we will be able to download our subjectivity into a computer.

There are others who think this is impossible. I am reminded of Thomas Nagel's "What Is It Like To Be a Bat?": http://organizations.utep.edu/portals/1475/nagel_bat.pdf

Although the unspeakable is often imagined to refer to something exotic and difficult to understand requiring years of meditation in a Himalayan retreat, if Nagel is right, the unspeakable is right in front of us in our day-to-day, ordinary, taken-for-granted experience of being who we are. Taking something for granted does not mean it has been spoken.

[Ecurb]

You miss my point. Our judgment about the quality of poetry is (naturally) subjective. How could it be otherwise? Nonetheless, criticism (like other forms of literature) should at least make some attempt to hold the interest of the reader. It should be interesting, or entertaining, or enlightening. The notion that giving a movie (or a poem) some "star rating" constitutes worthwhile criticism demeans the art form (the art of criticism, that is, not the arts of movies or poems).


When discussing a poem, the comments, "I found it moving" or "I was not engaged by it" constitute worthwhile conversation only if they are supported by details and insights about WHY. Of course we like things we like, and dislike things we dislike. Nobody disagrees with that. Why are such banalities worthy of mention?

Why should I care whether you like or dislike Pound? Perhaps I would find it interesting, however, if you pointed out some of the literary traits that make "Wife Merchant's Wife" a failure, or if you compared it to some poems with a similar theme that you find better, and discussed why, in your opinion, they are superior. At least there might be room for discussion. "It doesn't move me," doesn't move me (or, probably, anyone else), or stimulate conversation.

[YesNo]

You miss my point. Our judgment about the quality of poetry is (naturally) subjective. How could it be otherwise?

It can't be otherwise. Nor can our subjectivity be downloaded into a computer. That doesn't stop people from thinking that it can.



Nonetheless, criticism (like other forms of literature) should at least make some attempt to hold the interest of the reader. It should be interesting, or entertaining, or enlightening. The notion that giving a movie (or a poem) some "star rating" constitutes worthwhile criticism demeans the art form (the art of criticism, that is, not the arts of movies or poems).

A critical text of a poem is another text. Does it move the reader?

I use star ratings of movies at Rotten Tomatoes to help me decide if I should spend time watching the movie, or wait until it gets to the library or skip it entirely. I use Yelp in the same way for restaurants. It is a convenience.



When discussing a poem, the comments, "I found it moving" or "I was not engaged by it" constitute worthwhile conversation only if they are supported by details and insights about WHY. Of course we like things we like, and dislike things we dislike. Nobody disagrees with that. Why are such banalities worthy of mention?

There is a spiritual practice that encourages one to break the taken-for-granted patterns of liking and disliking. One way to do that is to let someone else choose what we will watch or eat. There may be no reason why someone likes or dislikes something except for habit and social mood.



Why should I care whether you like or dislike Pound? Perhaps I would find it interesting, however, if you pointed out some of the literary traits that make "Wife Merchant's Wife" a failure, or if you compared it to some poems with a similar theme that you find better, and discussed why, in your opinion, they are superior. At least there might be room for discussion. "It doesn't move me," doesn't move me (or, probably, anyone else), or stimulate conversation.

Here are other translations of that poem. http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/pound/othertranslations.htm

One thing that is clear from the formal nature of the written original is that it appears to be metrical. Pound's poem was not. I suspect he threw out the sound, perhaps a large part of the enjoyment of the poem, to implement his and Fenollosa's out-dated idea of "images" being embedded in those Chinese characters. Basically, Pound's version sounded too prosaic to me, but then I expect that sort of thing from him and my bias against it may have influenced my view.

Nonetheless, that would be one reason I don't like Pound's poem, but I don't know what it is like to have heard the original as a native speaker. I liked Fletcher's version although I think one could make it even more compact and perhaps closer the to pleasures I suspect could be obtained from the original.

[AuntShecky]

Then poetry is the use of words to indirectly infer the nature of what is unspeakable.


J

A profound explanation of expressing the inexpressible ^ appears in "Four Quartets," and becomes an especially penetrating theme throughout the "East Coker" section. Again and again Eliot refers to the frustrating process of wrestling with words in order to more precisely say what he means. So yes, the closer a poem comes to hitting the mark of expressing what's nearly impossible to express, the more "successful" it is.

In your statement, I think you mean "imply" rather than "infer," Jack.

And to comment upon the replies of others, though yer ol' Auntie is certainly no expert:
It would seem to me that as a type of literature, poetry falls under the category of art and thus is subject to the cardinal rule of art for art's sake. In that case, a poem is about itself --nothing more, nothing less. A poem shouldn't be expected to prove a point, make a living, justify its existence, or sing for its supper. Whether or not a poem can "move" an autdience is a beneficial side effect, but not the sole purpose of its existence.

A poem isn't even about the poet, and certainly not about the reader!



[Edited 2/10/16]

[tailor STATELY]

What makes a good poem ?
Surprise; beauty and symmetry
and their antitheses. Longevity perhaps.
A distillation of thought not lost on
the imagination, heart, nor spirit;
and sometimes nothing at all -
a sigh on the breeze

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor STATELY

[sandy14]

I like poetry that has layers of meaning. Every time you read the poem you get more depth, or different meanings.

That said, clarity is also a must - which almost contradicts what I said before. I think for me, it is the idea, or concept in the poem that has to work - whether it is a truth or a lie. I want to be able to read it and say -"yes, that's it," or at the very least gain an understanding from the narrator's perspective.

[YesNo]

I'm now stuck on trying to figure out what a poem is, let alone a good poem.

I figure the poem is not a book of poetry. That's a book perhaps of texts. I would have to read the text to have the poem be present in some way. When a poem is projected onto a text it is no longer the poem any more than a street projected onto my phone's map app is the street anymore.

It is also not a YouTube recitation of the poem that I could click on. That is a digital file that my computer could perform. As a file it is a projection of the poem, perhaps, but not the poem.

If I actually listened to the video or read the text, I suspect then the poem would become present to me, but there are other people out there as well who could be clicking on the link. So my reading or listening to the poem is perhaps part of the poem, but not all of it. Even then only part of the poem is being heard at any moment, so there are a whole bunch of temporal components to the poem.

A poem seems rather immaterial, like an electromagnetic field. Are these things real? The field is real because it moves iron filings around. The poem is real because it moves us.

[AuntShecky]

A profound explanation of expressing the inexpressible ^ appears in "Four Quartets," and becomes an especially penetrating theme throughout the "East Coker" section. Again and again Eliot refers to the frustrating process of wrestling with words in order to more precisely say what he means. So yes, the closer a poem comes to hitting the mark of expressing what's nearly impossible to express, the more "successful" it is.

In your statement, I think you mean "imply" rather than "infer," Jack.

And to comment upon the replies of others, though yer ol' Auntie is certainly no expert:
It would seem to me that as a type of literature, poetry falls under the category of art and thus is subject to the cardinal rule of art for art's sake. In that case, a poem is about itself --nothing more, nothing less. A poem shouldn't be expected to prove a point, make a living, justify its existence, or sing for its supper. Whether or not a poem can "move" an autdience is a beneficial side effect, but not the sole purpose of its existence.

A poem isn't even about the poet, and certainly not about the reader!


To elaborate further, if I may: A couple of hours after I posted that reply ^, the specific phrase I'd been thinking of suddenly came to me while I was doing the dishes that evening. The line is "a raid upon the inarticulate."

Incidentally, not only is "East Coker" a prime example of "what makes a good poem," it also illustrates exactly what a "good" poet attempts to do.

[YesNo]

Those ideas that come to a reader make me think that a poem is not the text in a book, but something else. A text is what has been articulated.

I was thinking about the proof that desirejab and I were discussing in the Cosmology thread and it occurred to me that just because someone sketches out a proof in a text doesn't mean I understand it. Understanding a proof would be like being moved by a poem.

[cacian]

I like a poem that changes me for the better
the more i read and the more i understand about me
that is my ideal poem.
.

[Ecurb]

I like a poem that changes me for the better
the more i read and the more i understand about me
that is my ideal poem.
.

I like a poem that changes other people for the better.

[cacian]

I like a poem that changes other people for the better.

others?
how?

[stlukesguild]

Poetry has long been undervalued/under-represented here at LitNet... but that only parallels the position of poetry within the larger world today. Both here... and in the media... one stumbles upon posts and articles which purport to present a list of the "greatest" books or the books everyone SHOULD have read. Almost without fail, these lists are exclusively populated by novels (and most written in English and in the last 150 years)... no poetry to be found. This thread doesn't give me much hope... but then again, as I already suggested... this has long been the reality. There were times, however, when LitNet was populated with a good number of readers who were quite knowledgeable, experienced, and passionate about poetry. The members Virgil, Petrarch's Love, Lokasenna (sp.?), JBI, Mortal Terror, and others immediately come to mind.

The question in the OP is impossible to answer. In any artistic genre there are "rules"... but none of these assure the result of a great work of art. If this were so, all we would need to do is learn the "rules" and follow them and voila! we'd all be artistic geniuses. The best we can do, IMO, is attempt to analyze what an artist has done within a given finished work of art and offer some thoughts as to why we feel this work of art succeeds or fails to succeed. Our personal subjective response to a work of art is not enough. Why should it matter to anyone but myself that I don't like Lima Beans, Schoenberg, or Sylvia Plath? The closest we come to an objective opinion (now there's an oxymoron if ever there was one) is through the collective opinions of "experts". By "experts" I include not merely critics and other academics, but also subsequent artists of merit, and well-informed art lovers... or in the realm of literature, what Virginia Woolf termed to not-so-common "common readers".

If you want to know what makes a poem good, read up on poetry, read what the critics have had to say, listen to what others with real experience in reading poetry have to say... and of course, read a lot of poetry... a whole lot of poetry. Embrace what you like... but don't be quick to draw conclusions or assume these should be set in stone. The more you read, the more you may discover that you find work which you initially disliked is actually quite good... and vis-versa.

[Ecurb]

others?
how?

Others (with the possible exception of Mary Poppins) need improvement more than I.

[Ecurb]

As is his wont in discussing literature, stlukesguild desires to create a "canon" of posters here at Litnet, and a mythical past, gilded by memory. It does seem, however, that there's been a lull in Litnet of late, both in quantity and quality.

Speaking of the past, there was a time (I think) when poetry was considered the essence of literature. This makes sense, because it is distilled and concentrated. In that sense, brandy is the essence of wine. But that doesn't mean that brandy is better than wine.

[Kunikos]

It sounds like several people generally agree with the idea of poetry exposing something hidden (Mohammad Ahmad, Jack of Hearts, AuntShecky, sandy14, YesNo). To address YesNo in particular— it sounds like you’re saying that written words (books) and audio recitations are not the poem— as if there’s some ideal form of a poem that they both access? That becomes “present” when you do those things, but which can never exist as a whole in the present? Your description of a temporal condition makes it sound like a poem articulates what’s hidden in a way that it comes from darkness to briefly illuminate something, only to returns to darkness again afterwards.

If that’s the case, what distinguishes that ephemeral illumination from, say, a book’s or song’s illumination (if they’re doing the same thing)? For example— one of my favorite songs is “Step Right Up” by Tom Waits. Assuming you had never seen it before, if I only showed you the lyrics without telling you it was a song, could you still decide it was “poetry”? (Forget “good” or “bad” for the moment— I’m simply curious if it could qualify as a poem). To take it one step further, what about a random sentence during a conversation that I happen to overhear?

Ecurb, cacian, assuming you mean that a poem which changes one for the better is “good”— what if it changes you for the worse? (Or to put it in other terms, if it illuminates something you didn’t want to see or “moves” you to a place you didn’t want to go to)— is it still “good”? Or would we have to find another adjective for that?

[Ecurb]

I WANT poetry to change me for the worse. I'm sick of being Joe Perfect all the time. The pressure is getting to me.

[Kunikos]

Hah, my condolences-- unless treated it sounds like it might be a terminal illness. I'd suggest starting off with a good dose of Nietzsche and following up with some Leonard Cohen: "Ring all the bells that still can ring/ forget your perfect offering/ there's a crack in everything/ that's how the light gets in."

On a more serious (?) note though-- do you really want that? I was trying to think of poetry/literature that actually did that and one of the authors who finally came to mind was de Sade (I'm afraid I'm playing rather fast and loose with the category of "poetry"-- perhaps someone more well-versed in poetry than I could come up with a more relevant example though, and one that's not quite as, well, repulsive?). In your quest to be changed for the worse, would you be willing to defend de Sade?

[Ecurb]

Well, I was jut kidding about the self-improvement. If you look at my earlier posts in this thread, I descried the tendency to discuss "what makes a good poem" by talking about oneself, instead of poetry.

It seems to me that poetry is a form of play -- playing with words and ideas. Robert Frost said that good poetry "begins in delight, and ends in wisdom". Many early forms of literature are even more evidently forms of play: riddles are one example (Tolkien, the scholar of ancient languages knew this when he had Bilbo and Gollum play the riddle game).

Humans use two basic forms of thinking: logic, and analogy. Philosophers reason their way to knowledge using logic; poets use analogy. So when Keats muses on the paintings on a Grecian urn, he concludes that "truth is beauty, beauty truth" not through logical argument, but, instead, using an aesthetic argument. His conclusion is playful and surprising, but persuasive. We WANT truth to be beautiful, and beauty to be truthful. It's a mythic, eternal truth, instead of a mundane and temporal one.

Not all poems are philosophical, like "Ode on a Grecian Urn", of course. Some might simply tell stories. But when we read "The Highwayman", we agree with Noyes that even if no such Highwayman ever lived, there is something both true and beautiful about the notion that

".... still of a winter's night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,
When the moon is a ghostly galleon, tossed upon cloudy seas.....
A highwayman comes riding....."

The poem has brought the Highwayman to life, like Frankenstein's monster.

Poetic truth is not historical, or scientific, or philosophical. It's a truth of the imagination, surprising, playful, and profound. Science and history evoke working truths -- they are "useful". Poetry evokes a different kind of truth: sacred instead of mundane; eternal instead of temporal; useless instead of useful.

[Kunikos]

I’d like to start off with— I think we’re on the same page about what criticism can/should be, or at least as much as possible given that I’m self-educated as far at literary critique goes, but I want to make sure. Critique, as you describe it in your house example, can be done as an admiration of pure architecture; as a litany of one’s subjective feelings of being dry/warm; or I would also suggest an in-between, as an admiration for the various things done that keep me warm and dry, which keeps alive the interplay between myself and the text. But that interplay has to be based in my description of the architecture to be accessible to others. The discussion can only continue if we fasten on different details or see the same detail in different ways and are willing to consider each others’ point of view while (re)considering our own. It sounds like you’re willing to entertain the third option so long as it doesn’t collapse into the second(?)

Given that understanding— I understand that you were kidding about self-improvement, but I still think it’s an interesting question, with reference both to my own subjectivity and the work’s “architecture”. If there’s a work that is deliberately constructed to pervert its readers, and it succeeds in doing so, could it be a “good” work? I’ll try to find some specific quotations for tomorrow if by chance this question piques any interest.


I loved your description of analogy and logic. It sounds like you have to accept the analogy, be open and generous to it, in a way that it can’t really control you unless you give it that power (because the linkage doesn’t exist unless you allow it to). With logic, it’s constantly dominating. I’d never thought of it that way before reading your post about “wanting” the analogy. I disagree with the idea of truth/beauty/eternity that this leads to though. As I said above, I don’t know too much about formal literary theory but it seems to me that play is fundamentally about change— inventing the new or transforming what exists— not “mythic eternal truths.” Playing with a child feels like having the rug constantly pulled out from under you because they can’t set things and stick to them, so everything is constantly in flux. Or, take your example of riddles, we’ll say the “thirty white horses on a red hill” one— part of the thrill of the riddle is that it shifts how we see teeth, it animates them, but that shift isn’t the last one to come about. Maybe one day the riddle could be riddled and there could be a different answer that also fits and simultaneously shifts how we see the original question. (I thought this might be what YesNo was leading up to with the “temporality” of the poem— that to continue to exist it must constantly create and recreate its meaning and its existence in different ways)

Perhaps I can kill two birds with one stone. I fell in love with the first poem you referenced, “the River Merchant’s Wife”— I’d like to offer a reading of it to complement yours, and try to draw out my point about temporality at the same time. I’m not fond of Pound’s translation, so I’ll be focusing on doors/walls and separations/joinings within the Chinese poem, where there are a few more threads to draw on. (eastasiastudent.net/china/classical/li-bai-changgan-xing/)

The poem begins with the girl playing in front of the door as children, before time and her marking of it even begins (“in the beginning”). They begin with a door (們) that is open.
At 14 when she marries, her face is no longer “open” (開). She inclines her head to the dark wall, showing the wall also between them (doorless or with a closed door)
At 15 she begins to smile, embrace the pillar of fidelity, and then there’s a really ambiguous sentence about ascending a platform to keep watch on her husband? This is the only part that doesn’t have walls or doors— it has the pillar and platform instead. Doors cease to separate, cease to exist— she wants to combine ashes with his. To intertwine a life means to turn the door of the meeting into the platform, the foundation, of a life together.
At 16, he leaves before they can realize this new foundation. In front of the door are the footprints of his departure (the place where they met is the place they part); they one by one grow moss, erasing the signs of his departure and the signs of their separation. She could accept that things have changed and, the signs of his departure fading, she could forget about him and seek some eternal respite (like she did at 15) instead of the constant coming and going of mortal life.
Instead, as an older woman, she chooses to continue to intertwine her life with his. She embraces temporality and seeks to stretch their time together a little longer. She decides to finally exit the door in the last stanza and journey out into the world to meet him, in order to lengthen their time together by accompanying him for awhile, rather than seeking the eternity of their ashes mixed together. Her decision to continue intertwining their lives turns it into an action, though at best a finite one (he’ll leave again) and which must be renewed constantly in creation and future actions to continue to exist.
Even if this poem or this reading touches on some eternal truth, in the same way as the husband and wife's life together, it has to be created and recreated constantly to still exist. No truth remains eternally without work and creation on our part to bring it into this world.

Thanks for the Noyes citation— it was the first time I read him. Would love to talk about that poem as well but this is getting too long already.

[YesNo]

It sounds like several people generally agree with the idea of poetry exposing something hidden (Mohammad Ahmad, Jack of Hearts, AuntShecky, sandy14, YesNo). To address YesNo in particular— it sounds like you’re saying that written words (books) and audio recitations are not the poem— as if there’s some ideal form of a poem that they both access? That becomes “present” when you do those things, but which can never exist as a whole in the present? Your description of a temporal condition makes it sound like a poem articulates what’s hidden in a way that it comes from darkness to briefly illuminate something, only to returns to darkness again afterwards.

The "presence" and "absence" come from reading the first part of Robert Sokolowski's "Introduction to Phenomenology". They are based on "intentionality" which is consciousness "of" something. That something may be considered present or absent both spatially and temporally. In this thread the something we are conscious of is a poem.

I don't think a "book of poems" contains poetry. It contains texts of poems which are projections of real poems so that they can be communicated to others. The real poem is not fully present even to someone reading it at the moment. The reader only gets the words they are aware of through reading at the moment. I would have to say the same thing about a video or audio "text" to be consistent. It also is a projection of some reality that goes through presence-absence aspects as the object of our consciousness.

What this does is makes subjectivity primary and focuses attention from a physical text to something immaterial which we probably don't think can exist but which I claim is what we are conscious of. The poem is absent until it is read when it become partially present. Compare this with a computer "reading" a digital projection of the poem by perhaps scanning it for viruses. The computer does not make the poem present while doing that. Since the computer has no subjectivity, it cannot be conscious of the poem whatever it might do to the data the poem has been projected into.



If that’s the case, what distinguishes that ephemeral illumination from, say, a book’s or song’s illumination (if they’re doing the same thing)? For example— one of my favorite songs is “Step Right Up” by Tom Waits. Assuming you had never seen it before, if I only showed you the lyrics without telling you it was a song, could you still decide it was “poetry”? (Forget “good” or “bad” for the moment— I’m simply curious if it could qualify as a poem). To take it one step further, what about a random sentence during a conversation that I happen to overhear?


It is amazing what passes for poetry today. If you said it was a poem, I would give you the benefit of the doubt. In general for me, I put song lyrics in the poetry category by default. I might hesitate with "Bird is the Word" by the Trashmen, but that is certainly not prose either.

One divides texts naively into poetry and prose for some reason that has never made any sense to me. I don't mind calling all of them examples of language use and be done with it. However assuming poetry-prose is a good division, then because of the potential overlap (see "Bird is the Word"), there are four categories to consider: 1) poetry, 2) prose, 3) poetry and prose, and 4) neither poetry nor prose.

It doesn't matter to me which one the random sentence goes under. What matters is my subjective experience of the random sentence. Does it move me? Does it enlighten me? Do I understand something better? What matters is my subjectivity and my subjectivity is linked to your subjectivity since we communicate through language. It may well be linked to the subjectivity of other species through empathy.

[Ecurb]

I'll grant that "eternal truths" sounds cheesy (as if they are somehow superior to "facts"). Nonetheless, logic is a system of non-contradiction. Logic can only show what is contradictory, not what is true. (Chesterton wrote, "you can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.") Analogy approaches things differently. In fact, competing theories of language and how children learn the meaning of words are logical (structualism; a bird is +feathers, + warm blooded, - scales, etc.) or analogical (children identify animals as "birds" based on their similarity to some archetype -- a robin, perhaps). News is historical and factual. Poetry is separate from history and facts.

IN other words, logic is how we prove that two things cannot be both different and the same; analogy is how we look at two things as being both different and the same.


Nice analysis of "River Merchant's Wife". I don't know much about Pound; I just linked the poem because Yesno doesn't like Pound, and I wanted to torment him.

[YesNo]

Thanks for the torment. Actually, on my back burner is a plan to translate some Tang poems using an anti-imagist approach to Chinese.

I agree with you about logic. The assumptions contain the truth (or falsehood) one has found. Logic then takes over to rationalize it.

[Eugae]

I would say, what does made a melody, a song or a music beautiful, then, that is the same thing that moves a poem.
Rhytm, ryme, verses, assonance, consonance, it is music, and music of poetry touches in the world of words (sorry for the last sentence).
I wish I could speak a better english, to be assertive or persuasive, but what remains to me is a hand full of simple words, and who knows... maybe that is the better way to describe it,
I may be wrong, I think that maybe speech and communication make poetry in it's initial form, and onomatopeas probably makes words, imitation then might create some words, and words thus are connected for the same reason for they are born..
so that they can echo between meaning and sound. Yet it seems a simple argument, isn't it?
But maybe poetry is not so complex in nature as it seems.

[tranthuphuong]

I think a poem or to convey is the author's example and most importantly make impressive reading. I often haunted by the poem right with my mood.

[Jack of Hearts]

A profound explanation of expressing the inexpressible ^ appears in "Four Quartets," and becomes an especially penetrating theme throughout the "East Coker" section. Again and again Eliot refers to the frustrating process of wrestling with words in order to more precisely say what he means. So yes, the closer a poem comes to hitting the mark of expressing what's nearly impossible to express, the more "successful" it is.

In your statement, I think you mean "imply" rather than "infer," Jack.

And to comment upon the replies of others, though yer ol' Auntie is certainly no expert:
It would seem to me that as a type of literature, poetry falls under the category of art and thus is subject to the cardinal rule of art for art's sake. In that case, a poem is about itself --nothing more, nothing less. A poem shouldn't be expected to prove a point, make a living, justify its existence, or sing for its supper. Whether or not a poem can "move" an autdience is a beneficial side effect, but not the sole purpose of its existence.

A poem isn't even about the poet, and certainly not about the reader!



[Edited 2/10/16]

Would agree with this. From the experience of studying (academically and personally), reading and creating poetry, this seems most immediate.

BTW none of this gets you paid IRL, and there are no women here.



J

[desiresjab]

Good poems come from a spectrum that spans the entire width of literature, from children's poetry to tragic drama.

If we assume some abstraction makes so diverse a body of poems similar in some way we call good, what is it? What ties so diverse a body of work together that they all have in common one thing more highly than any other thing? What is that thing?

Word value. Generally, good poems are intensely worked plots of land, often small, with a high yield. By form, association, rhythm, pressure, echo, allusion, and any other device, the poet with her green thumb nurses her plot of ordinary words to a higher yield, producing extraordinary exhibits.

The words of good poems are examples of permanent arrangements of high word value which are worth keeping, or somehow get kept. They seem to have a permanent battery. These represent standards and watermarks of acheivement in obtaining high value out of few and ordinary words, in any particular category of that broad medium we care to accept as poetry.

Like Walt said in so many words: if it ain't got that sting, it won't mean a thing. We have to trust that the word arrangements of extraordinary green thumbs, because of their high word value and level of concealed energy, will be recognized by enough lovers of such arrangements not to die unheralded.

[YesNo]

What is "word value"? I agree with Walt: if it ain't got that sting, it don't mean a thing.

Can one objectify word value by checking off different "devices" that the poet uses such as form, association, rhythm, or is it something more subjective? I suspect it is something subjective implying that it cannot be completely objectified.

One test I use for myself when thinking about these concepts is to ask if a computer replaced the human reader or writer, what difference would it make? If a concept is completely objectified, then a computer could completely replace the human.

[desiresjab]

What is "word value"? I agree with Walt: if it ain't got that sting, it don't mean a thing.

Can one objectify word value by checking off different "devices" that the poet uses such as form, association, rhythm, or is it something more subjective? I suspect it is something subjective implying that it cannot be completely objectified.

One test I use for myself when thinking about these concepts is to ask if a computer replaced the human reader or writer, what difference would it make? If a concept is completely objectified, then a computer could completely replace the human.

If you cannot figure out what word value is on your own, you should find something to talk about besides poetry. If you do not already know of a difference in word value between a newspapaer article and a poem of Yeats, what are you doing here? I am not going to semantically break down every term I use.

[Danik 2016]

What is "word value"? I agree with Walt: if it ain't got that sting, it don't mean a thing.

Can one objectify word value by checking off different "devices" that the poet uses such as form, association, rhythm, or is it something more subjective? I suspect it is something subjective implying that it cannot be completely objectified.

One test I use for myself when thinking about these concepts is to ask if a computer replaced the human reader or writer, what difference would it make? If a concept is completely objectified, then a computer could completely replace the human.
I think the question deserves a decent answer."Word value" suggests to me intuitively polysemy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polysemy
I think the good poets have that capacity of hitting home, by using common words or common words in an unusual way or in unusual arrangements. And, of course there must be a strong significance behind the arrangment. Anyway, I think it is not just a rational concept. The magic of poetry is that you can´t just reduce it to a mathematical formula.

"A Child Said, What Is The Grass? - Poem by Walt Whitman

A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full
hands;
How could I answer the child?. . . .I do not know what it
is any more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful
green stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we
may see and remark, and say Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child. . . .the produced babe
of the vegetation.

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow
zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the
same, I receive them the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them;
It may be you are from old people and from women, and
from offspring taken soon out of their mother's laps,
And here you are the mother's laps.

This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old
mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues!
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths
for nothing.

I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men
and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring
taken soon out of their laps.

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
What do you think has become of the women and
children?

They are alive and well somewhere;
The smallest sprouts show there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait
at the end to arrest it,
And ceased the moment life appeared.
All goes onward and outward. . . .and nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and
luckier.
Walt Whitman"
After reading this poem I guess the meaning of the word grass will never be the same for a human. I think a highly sofisticated PC might perhaps register the different uses of the word. But he would never be able to appreciate them.;)

[YesNo]

After reading this poem I guess the meaning of the word grass will never be the same for a human. I think a highly sofisticated PC might perhaps register the different uses of the word. But he would never be able to appreciate them.;)

I agree with that. I don't think a computer would be able to say if a poem was "good" or not.

Sometimes thinking about "words" or their objectification in "texts" I find myself forgetting the subjectivity or intentionality that makes a word real as a word rather than as a text.