A Few Things You Always Wanted to Know about Poetry and forgot to ask

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Madame X

Dunno about that. Art can be as accidental (or even incidental), as it is intentional, if not more so. Which might be sort of lame and demoralizing, but then, as that trendy professor seemed to be saying, the holy principles of aesthetics work in the most mysterious of ways. :brow: Or, if you’d prefer a bit of historical insight, there is a quaint Latin saying, lamer still, but equally as non-delineative: de gustibus non est disputandum. :p

---

Well, you may not know about that, but I do.

Jawohl mein Führer! :D

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Virgil

Any work of anything that is jumbled together without "order" or "purpose" is certainly not art. It may be something else, but it's not art.

---

I totally agree with you, Virgil. I think the apparent disorder or randomness or spontaneity of some art (whether it is sculpture, painting, or writing) may lead someone to believe it was not calculated or ordered.

Then there are those "works of art" where someone throws paint up in front of a fan or jet engine, lets it fall on canvas and sells it for thousands. Because someone likes the results of these exercises does not make them into works of art (the operative word being work). One might argue something similar for language art that there is "found poetry" and spam poetry, but these are nothing more than after the fact applying an aesthetic filter that, somewhere in time, an artist worked hard to establish.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Madame X

Jawohl mein Führer! :D

---

:lol: Anytime.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by firefangled

I totally agree with you, Virgil. I think the apparent disorder or randomness or spontaneity of some art (whether it is sculpture, painting, or writing) may lead someone to believe it was not calculated or ordered.

Then there are those "works of art" where someone throws paint up in front of a fan or jet engine, lets it fall on canvas and sells it for thousands. Because someone likes the results of these exercises does not make them into works of art (the operative word being work). One might argue something similar for language art that there is "found poetry" and spam poetry, but these are nothing more than after the fact applying an aesthetic filter that, somewhere in time, an artist worked hard to establish.

---

Thank you Fire. :)

Didn't mean to start such a commotion. This was a 400 level English class so we were supposed to already know meter etc. He also taught meter but later in the semester essentially pulled out the rug and said that poetry was what we said it was - completely subjective.

He later published a poem as I understand and had a book signing etc at Yale University. His poem had no rhyme, meter, etc. It was words in a strange shape on the page and exceedingly off color in nature. Hardly surprising. I love him to death as a person but as a professor...? He teaches at Penn State now, so look out y'all over there!

Thank you for this thread AuntShecky. Most enlightening.

As a poet, in the most minor sense, many of my writing flaws have become most apparent; (...) guilty - most egregiously [lol]. Not having any formal writing education, however, did allow me a certain freedom to many, many, failures in expression and style. Now, perhaps, I can build upon those failures within the constraints of critical thought.

By the by... (sorry, habit)... (smacking hands)... (aahh!!!). Anyone else having difficulty accessing the last 4 or 5 replies? [my last access was to reply #43 for some reason].

Enchant Me...

Your very being
a desire for answer
Lament not
your unassailable
mystery
Enchant me with
your dreams

[QUOTE=tailor STATELY;787860]
By the by... (sorry, habit)... (smacking hands)... (aahh!!!). Anyone else having difficulty accessing the last 4 or 5 replies? [my last access was to reply #43 for some reason].

QUOTE]

This is a really old thread, tailor STATELY, and that may account for the difficulty. I "revived" it, so to speak, because I noticed a terrible error, and the orig. thread was so long that the mechanism for "editing" was no longer available. Please take heed of reply # 30 (above), though, as I don't want anybody to walk around with a mistake made by me.

Ahhh. This thread is one of the reasons why I joined this wonderful forum. I'm sorry the æther-bunnies have nibbled upon the anti-vellum of such a fine work.

With gratitude,
tailor STATELY

Okay I'm bumping this to clarify something I read on a recent --but since then "closed" -- thread about poetry.

Please remember that blank verse means "unrhymed iambic pentameter." It is not a synonym for "free verse," which simply means lines composed without the use of metre.

I'm no expert, so as always, if you find any errors in any of the material in the previous postings in this thread please, please bring them to our attention.
(I already know about the notorious Auntie internet gaffe about "appointing"Miller Williams Poet Laureate. He is Lucinda's father, though, and a damn good poet. No mistake about that!)