Does Poetry Make Anything Happen?

W.H. Auden, one of the greatest poets of the century just past, wrote the gorgeous elegy "In Memory of W.B. Yeats"published a year after Yeats's death in January, 1939.

A fragment of a line in that poem reads:
"For poetry makes nothing happen. . ."

I read that line twice yesterday: in the morning when I was looking for models of elegies and later yesterday afternoon in an article on Slate.com. (By the bye, the author of the Slate article misattributed the line to Ezra Pound.)

Anyway, I wonder if our brilliant LitNetters might discuss their thoughts on of Auden's poetic statement.

Do you think poetry matters at all? Does it matter to anyone other than people who think they write poetry or actual readers of poetry, the number of the latter alas considerably smaller than the latter.

Why do so few people read poetry today?

Does poetry make anything at all "happen"? If so, what happens. Why? How?

I'm eagerly anticipating a multitude of replies.

Auntie

Well, I can't help but to think of the words of Wilde for a couple of instances. Firstly, the famous line from the preface of Doran Gray "all art is quite useless" and to add a new angle to the question "Why do so few people read poetry today?" with (from my bad memory) "the art form that has survived the best is poetry because the public do not read it, and therefore do not influence it." In other words the popular market does not infect or dilute the original art form, therefore you could argue that it is a good thing that most people don't read poetry.

With all that said, I do not want to take the line from Auden "For poetry makes nothing happen" out of context for I am unfamiliar with the poem, or at least it doesn't spring to mind at present.

Anyway, back to the questions:

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Do you think poetry matters at all?

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Well it does for me, my passion and love of literature makes it so. What others think I care little for, I do care, but it is little.

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Does it matter to anyone other than people who think they write poetry or actual readers of poetry, the number of the latter alas considerably smaller than the latter

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I don't quite get what you mean, I have had a long day, say again?

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Why do so few people read poetry today?

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I think to some extent you could argue that written poetry has always been read and appreciated by a select audience, granted it was more popular in the past with the general public, but you could say it came under threat as mass literature with the invent of the novel as a literary form. Certainly going into the 20th century the 'new' media of film and cinema has pushed poetry even further down the scale. Some big generalisations here granted, but I am thinking in general terms at this point. Now of course the form of poetry is even further away from the mass audience with the importance and influence of digital technologies. Actually today more people write poetry than actually read it (and most of it is rubbish).

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Does poetry make anything at all "happen"? If so, what happens. Why? How?

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That's quite a big set of questions in its own right. For me poetry gets under the skin and invades the mind, it is still the 'highest form of literature' in my opinion, even if that is unpopular with the postmodernist brigade. Poetry can do so much in so little space. Good poetry can affect all sides of human emotion. Really poetry is everything, even if today most people think it is nothing.

The line is in context of the War, both finished and brewing, and parallels Yeats' last poem, Under Ben Bulben. The poem was clearly in Auden's mind while he was writing, but I think the line refers specifically to the closing lines:

Cast a cold eye,
On life, On death
Horseman pass By!


In truth, Auden thought the world had ultimately failed, and I think that is why he left England, never to return, just after the composition of this poem. The beginning of the second World War only heightened his disillusionment.

Thanks for your replies. Here are Auden's lines that follow the
line in question:

For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.


As to the line "poetry makes nothing happen,"Auden hated theatricality, or the habit poets have of regarding their role as more important than it really is, either as guardians of revelation (Yeats) or "unacknowledged legislation for mankind." (Shelley.)The introduction to Auden's section in the Norton anthology states
that Auden "has questioned the efficacy of his art even while delighting in it. Though much of his early work is prophetic of social and political change, he repeatedly insists that poetry can have no value in other spheres."

Indeed,as the poster above states, the presage of looming war was on Auden's mind, also he may have felt a little twinge for having criticized Yeats's unapologetically blatant mysticism and dabbling in the occult. Auden, by contrast, was rather straightforward, and in one of poetry's main "occupational hazards" --what's more important, sound or sense?-- Yeats favored the former and Auden, the latter. But reading this elegy the reader can infer the deep respect and esteem which Auden held for the Irish bard.

According to the introduction in my trusty Norton anthology(I'll paraphrase), Auden felt a connection with the sensibilities of T.S. Eliot; consciously avoiding the Romantic tradition, he was
a "disenchanter," albeit with images both "homely" and "abstract," not to mention his gifts for ironic understatement unparalleled wit.

Over the centuries poetry has certainly lost the almost-religious significance and influence upon the public weal as it had in Homer's time, or even as late as Elizabethan times, in which poetic virtuosity, almost a kind of competitive gamemanship arose.

Eliot famously defined poetry as "a superior form of entertainment," and if you buy that notion, then it will explain why poetry as an entertainment option is way down on the contemporary list of movies, videos, Internet sites, and the
smorgasbord of offerings for the 2lst century consumer. I do believe that very few folks bother reading poems these days, and even the existence of poetry is publicly acknowledged only on high-falutin', solemn occasions, such as an Inaugural ceremony or weddings and funerals. If you define poetry broadly, and include song lyrics in that spectrum (which I do, especially among the lyrics of American standard songs composed in the 1930s and 40s), or even if you think that rap lyrics are a form of poetry, then poetry still "matters" as an entertainment.

But as I implied in my original posting, more people think they write "poetry" than actually read it. There is a sad reason for this, I think, and that is that the teaching of poetry is given short shrift in the public schools. When the students are assigned poetry, more often than not the emphasis is on the "what" ("what is the poem saying?" rather than the "how" (why did the
poet use this particular technique?) Because poetry has not been properly taught, kids don't know how to read it. "It's too hard!" they might moan and groan.

Admittedly, the dense and nearly incomprehensibly abstract poetry of the last four or five decades may have contributed to
its own obscurity.


Like Eliot, Auden loved the traditions of old English poetry and the Church of England, though his religious beliefs differed from those of Eliot in that Auden was "earthier" and less mystical. He also differed from Eliot in that his political beliefs veered left. The responsibility of an individual to shift focus upon the greater good ("moral revolution") is a recurrent theme: "a change of heart." He revised his own poems over and over again, even after their initial publication.

It is true that Auden seemed to have turned his back on England in favor of the United States (the opposite of Eliot's situation.)

But the statement above that he left England forever, never to return isn't absolutely correct.

He became an American citizen in 1946, and divided his life between Greenwich Village and a retreat in lower Austria. Yet in 1972 he went home to his old college, Christ Church, in Oxford
where he died in 1973.

Who knows, it could easily just gesture to this:

Quattrocento put in paint
On backgrounds for a God or Saint
Gardens where a soul's at ease;
Where everything that meets the eye,
Flowers and grass and cloudless sky,
Resemble forms that are or seem
When sleepers wake and yet still dream,
And when it's vanished still declare,
With only bed and bedstead there,
That heavens had opened.

From Under Ben Bulben, W.B. Yeats.

In truth, poetry achieves its goal. It makes something happen. It just doesn't particularly work well for politics - though some have tried. Prose is more suited for political discourse, poetry is more suited for what is beneath the political discourse. It usually doesn't encourage people to rise up, but it shows the possibility.

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Originally Posted by AuntShecky

W.H. Auden, one of the greatest poets of the century just past, wrote the gorgeous elegy "In Memory of W.B. Yeats"published a year after Yeats's death in January, 1939.

A fragment of a line in that poem reads:
"For poetry makes nothing happen. . ."

I read that line twice yesterday: in the morning when I was looking for models of elegies and later yesterday afternoon in an article on Slate.com. (By the bye, the author of the Slate article misattributed the line to Ezra Pound.)

Anyway, I wonder if our brilliant LitNetters might discuss their thoughts on of Auden's poetic statement.

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Surely. I have said that art does not move society, it reflects society. I think that is what Auden is saying too. Sure there are activist writers, but frankly I do not believe they move society. Everyone mentions Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin as having pushed the US toward confronting slavery and the civil war. Well, that debate had been going on for decades before the novel. At its most, perhaps the novel lit the powder keg, but the powder keg was loaded and ready to burst, but frankly even that I'm skeptical of. The country was headed for this civil war and it was an irreconcible difference where either a split was to occur or the South was to be catagorically defeated. I don't believe the novel had any substantial impact.

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Do you think poetry matters at all? Does it matter to anyone other than people who think they write poetry or actual readers of poetry, the number of the latter alas considerably smaller than the latter.

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Of course it matters. It captures the stories and language of our age. However, I also am skeptical that it captures more than that. People have seen some of my comments warning that you cannot assess an issue or a time and place from a work of art. It is a subjective opinion, not anthropological study nor an economic evaluation nor a statistical computation. It is based on anectdote and local mythology/urban legend from the impressions of a artist, and frankly artisit to me have never seemed all in tuned with reality. My goodness, here on lit net in recent days there is a popular thread that purports to claim we never went to the moon and that the moon landings were a hoax. But of course poetry and art matters because the stories and language matters and of course the aesthetics of art matter.

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Why do so few people read poetry today?

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Somewhere in the middle of the 19th century (in England and perhaps even the US but at other countries it may have been at a different time) a split developed between what we call artsy literature and more common/popular literature. I'm not exactly sure why and how the split developed but it did. I suspect it has something to do with one needing greater and greater knowledge of the intricacies of literature to appreciate the "artsy" stuff. A person can't just pick up TS Eliot without a good literature background and expect it to make sense. Poetry has fallen almost exclusively in the artsy side. Again I can't answer why.

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Does poetry make anything at all "happen"? If so, what happens. Why? How?

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I answered this above. In short no, becasue a poet is not an expert on anything other than poetry. Why would anyone heed the economic advice of a poet to solve the current economic problem?

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I'm eagerly anticipating a multitude of replies.

Auntie

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I hope that made sense. Good question Auntie. :)

Thanks for weighing in on this, Virgil. Your well-considered responses are always refreshing.

I cannot write a long reply at the moment but we need to define what it is that poetry is supposed to make happen -if anything- to be able to answer this question, no?

Whenever I confront a question such as the one you pose with reference to Auden's "For poetry makes nothing happen. . ." I always think to Robert Frost, who I think had the best take on the ultimate value of poetry.

His well-know phrase that poetry offers us (its readers) "a momentary stay against confusion" sums up what poetry "makes happen" quite well. To expound on this, I think that poetry affect the reader personally, quietly, and spiritually, and intellectually. But, baring a few exceptions here and there, it doesn't do much more than that.

Of course, its indirect influence may be great: someone is affected by a Shakespearean sonnet, T.S. Elliot's "Four Quartets," or the little poem my daughter wrote at day care today and is then moved to affect the world or her community in a some important way. . . .then sure poetry makes something happen in so much as the toast I had for breakfast helped me affect the world in some small way today.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

I answered this above. In short no, becasue a poet is not an expert on anything other than poetry. Why would anyone heed the economic advice of a poet to solve the current economic problem?

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Strictly speaking, yes, but the simple fact that a man is a poet (even a talented poet) does not rule out his capabilities in other realms. I've read some of Yeats's political writings and, in addition to some of his scientific beliefs, he seems to have been completely backward. Philosophically I detest mysticism, but as a poet, Yeats is tops.

Concerning the U.S. economic problem, I'm sure some poets (like Pound) might have had a lot to say.

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Originally Posted by mayneverhave

Strictly speaking, yes, but the simple fact that a man is a poet (even a talented poet) does not rule out his capabilities in other realms. .

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Sure, if he's got other expertise. I'm an engineer in my work life. If I were to ever become a poet, I do think I know something of engineering. If a poet or writer has other expertise, it's outside of his poetic talents. One doesn't accentuate the other.

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I've read some of Yeats's political writings and, in addition to some of his scientific beliefs, he seems to have been completely backward. Philosophically I detest mysticism, but as a poet, Yeats is tops.

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That's exactly my point.

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Concerning the U.S. economic problem, I'm sure some poets (like Pound) might have had a lot to say

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Oh I'm sure that he would have lots to say. Pound spoke about economics and it was all asinine. Like I said above, no one would or should take it seriously. But for some strange reason people take celebrities and poets/writers/artists seriously in endeavors they have no expertise. Amazing to me.

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Originally Posted by Scheherazade

I cannot write a long reply at the moment but we need to define what it is that poetry is supposed to make happen -if anything- to be able to answer this question, no?

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Yes, I was a little confused about it. I made an assumption Auntie was referring to social reform. But it was an assumption. She may have had other thoughts in mind.

Sidney, and later Eliot argued that poetry brings one to the gate of the Garden of Eden. I am of the same mind - the vision of the poetry, through the metaphor, allows for that which cannot be contained in words to be expressed through comparison, and trope.

There is a discussion going on amongst Canadian poets about whether one can actually write wilderness. The general conclusion is that though one cannot actually write wilderness, one can circle it, and come close to it, allowing for the reader's perceptions to get close enough that they can get the idea, and use their own imagination to take them over the fence. Metaphor allows for the unreal to temporarily be the real, through what Coleridge called the "suspension of disbelief". Metaphor is the soul of the imagination, and metaphor is the soul of poetry. One cannot feel, but one can relate, by means of comparison.

Only poetry can do that. Of course then, poetry then acknowledges its own failure. Ultimately it can only offer a glimpse, and ultimately that glimpse has to die. Poetry is bound to a cycle of time, and each word, line, stanza, and poem naturally has to die. But the words, through rereading, are allowed to be reborn within the reader's imagination, for a time, and to offer an outlet into another world.

This is the preoccupation of all poetry, and is perhaps done the best in great works, like Wordsworth's Inclinations Ode, Eliot's Four Quartets, Shakespeare's Great Sonnets, and Leopardi's Canti. One cannot walk into paradise through poetry, but one can come to the gate, and that is the function.

Where does that Plenty dwell, I’d n like to know,
Which fathered poor desire, as Plato taught?
Out on the real and endless waters go
Conquistador and stubborn Argonaut.
Where Buddha bathed, the golden bowl he brought
Gilded the stream, but stalled its living tide.
The sunlight withers as the verse is wrought.
I die of thirst, here at the fountain-side.

From The Ballade of the Duke of Orleans by Richard Wilbur, Bolding mine.

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Originally Posted by JBI

Sidney, and later Eliot argued that poetry brings one to the gate of the Garden of Eden. I am of the same mind - the vision of the poetry, through the metaphor, allows for that which cannot be contained in words to be expressed through comparison, and trope.

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That is a great statement JBI. I agree with it entirely.

Eliot says it far better than I can at the end of Burnt Norton:

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Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.
Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts,
Not that only, but the co-existence,
Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end.
And all is always now. Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still. Shrieking voices
Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering,
Always assail them. The Word in the desert
Is most attacked by voices of temptation,
The crying shadow in the funeral dance,
The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera.

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In fact, the whole collection of the Four Quartets seems to meditate on the limitations of words. Eliot can bring us to the Rose Garden, but we are unable to enter with him.

This is a highly romantic view of literature, and as an artist and lover of art, I can appreciate it.

However, I'm plagued by doubt. This metaphysical "that which cannot be said"; how can we be sure it has any existence? Whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent. I understand how metaphor conveys a sense, a mood - if you will - but is it not merely the psychology of, in this case, T.S. Eliot, and not some grand artistic existence?

The Garden of Eden (in the way you use the term) is a beautiful thought, but how can we be sure it is nothing more?

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Originally Posted by JBI

There is a discussion going on amongst Canadian poets about whether one can actually write wilderness. The general conclusion is that though one cannot actually write wilderness, one can circle it, and come close to it, allowing for the reader's perceptions to get close enough that they can get the idea, and use their own imagination to take them over the fence. Metaphor allows for the unreal to temporarily be the real, through what Coleridge called the "suspension of disbelief". Metaphor is the soul of the imagination, and metaphor is the soul of poetry. One cannot feel, but one can relate, by means of comparison.

Only poetry can do that. Of course then, poetry then acknowledges its own failure. Ultimately it can only offer a glimpse, and ultimately that glimpse has to die. Poetry is bound to a cycle of time, and each word, line, stanza, and poem naturally has to die. But the words, through rereading, are allowed to be reborn within the reader's imagination, for a time, and to offer an outlet into another world.

This is the preoccupation of all poetry, and is perhaps done the best in great works, like Wordsworth's Inclinations Ode, Eliot's Four Quartets, Shakespeare's Great Sonnets, and Leopardi's Canti. One cannot walk into paradise through poetry, but one can come to the gate, and that is the function.

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Perhaps that notion -- the poet can describe or depict wilderness but he or she can't recreate it -- could possibly bring us closer to discovering what Auden meant.
"Nothing happens IN poetry." Something happens to the poet BEFORE he writes it (cf. "Tradition and Individual Talent" by T. S. Eliot.) Something happens when an educated -- or at least open-minded--reader experiences it. But the poem itself is the mere vessel or conduit, though I use the term "mere" advisedly.

Good verse approaches the gate to the Garden of Eden, and like the shadows in Plato's cave, poetry's estimates, approximations,descriptions, "metaphors," are one level removed from the reality.

Another line in Eliot's Four Quartets describes the
poem as a "raid on the inarticulate."

So as Scher rightly asked, we have to determine what poetry is before we could know whether anything happens
"in" it. Maybe we could say that a poem helps define
the indescribable-- the same role as ancient myths thought up to explain natural phenomena for which science
had not yet developed the ability nor the tools to explain.

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Originally Posted by mayneverhave

However, I'm plagued by doubt. This metaphysical "that which cannot be said"; how can we be sure it has any existence? Whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent. I understand how metaphor conveys a sense, a mood - if you will - but is it not merely the psychology of, in this case, T.S. Eliot, and not some grand artistic existence?

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This is another extremely valid and significant philosophical
question:

Can there ever be such a thing as a "thought" without words to express it?

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Originally Posted by AuntShecky

This is another extremely valid and significant philosophical
question:

Can there ever be such a thing as a "thought" without words to express it?

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I believe so. My dog has many thoughts, especially about dinner. I know she does. But she has no words that I can tell to express it.

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Originally Posted by AuntShecky

So as Scher rightly asked, we have to determine what poetry is before we could know whether anything happens
"in" it. Maybe we could say that a poem helps define
the indescribable-- the same role as ancient myths thought up to explain natural phenomena for which science
had not yet developed the ability nor the tools to explain.

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I think that would change from one poet to the other; poem to poem at times.

At times it might be a personal whisper to one person in particular or sometimes a shout over the roof tops for everyone to pay attention.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

I believe so. My dog has many thoughts, especially about dinner. I know she does. But she has no words that I can tell to express it.

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Is that what conventional wisdom has come to know as
"thought" or is it instinct? Look at it this way:
Instinct: "I'm hungry."
Thought: "I wonder what Virgil will give me for dinner.
Maybe he'll give me Puppy Chow. Hope he doesn't make it
too soggy. I can't say I care much for Alpo, but at least it
smells "O-kay!"*

*Way back in the Way Back machine Arlene Francis used to do commercials for Alpo, which ended with her saying,
"And it smells. . . .o-kay!"

I don't know if you're old enough to remember the Alpo
commercials that Ed McMahon used to do "live" on the
Johnny Carson show. Occasionally the dog would turn his
nose up at the stuff, and while Ed tried to salvage the situation, Johnny would go into hysterics. One time Johnny actually pantomimed one of Man's best friends. He
got down on all fours and pretended to eat the Alpo.

No it's definitely thought. My dog knows the way to places we go, makes turns, knows when its feeding time. She even makes decisions on which person to pester for certain things. She remembers people and other dogs. She knows my mother, even though she only sees her once a week and knows my mother's habits in the way she does things around the house. There is definitely cognition there. It's not human cognition, but there are thoughts.

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Originally Posted by AuntShecky

Can there ever be such a thing as a "thought" without words to express it?

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Sort of, I think. I agree with Virgil's interesting post about his dog and thoughts. Regarding humans, I think that we can have thoughts without words when we are infants and have no words. But once we have language, then thoughts without words are impossible. I don't know why, but based on my observations with the language development of my two daughters, it sure seems so to me.

Of course, I'm no psychologist.

EDIT: I'd still argue that poetry doesn't do a dang thing. It just sits there on the page. Of course, the people reading it, the people inspired by it can accomplish things. But even the emotional stuff that poetry expresses. . . . just ink on the page, pixels on the screen. . . . doing nothing, no different than the rocks by the river that runs by my house. Only people accomplish things.

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Originally Posted by The Comedian

Sort of, I think. I agree with Virgil's interesting post about his dog and thoughts. Regarding humans, I think that we can have thoughts without words when we are infants and have no words. But once we have language, then thoughts without words are impossible. I don't know why, but based on my observations with the language development of my two daughters, it sure seems so to me.

Of course, I'm no psychologist.

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But how do you know we don't have thoughts before the language comes to us? As I just read your post this thought came to me, but I really didn't formulate the language until after I started to articulate it. It's my perception that there is a millisecond of thought before language shapes it.

Well, I think poetry is an expression of the writer, not something that NEEDS to be read anyways. But I agree that poetry today is to a considerable degree, pointless. Few people read it, and those who do usually criticize it for no apparent reason, like one of my rather provincial friends, who thinks anything involving reading and writing is as bad as sin! So, overall, I dont really know lol. bad answer i guess. but if you write it, write it for yourself.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

But how do you know we don't have thoughts before the language comes to us? As I just read your post this thought came to me, but I really didn't formulate the language until after I started to articulate it. It's my perception that there is a millisecond of thought before language shapes it.

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I don't really know. It just seems that way to me. Maybe we continue to have non-linguistic thoughts after we develop language. If we do, that non-linguistic thinking is some weird, weird, stuff. I mean, non-linguistic thinking has to have some form, right? If not language, then what?

The question, do poetry make anything happen, why and how, is a very good and relevant one. One of the chief objectives of poetry is to elevate human mind. It adds velocity to the otherwise inert mind. Mind at most times has only weight, and no velocity. We all know that weight into velocity is equal to momentum. An aeroplane lying on the ground has weight. When the motors are started and the fuel is ignited, it gains velocity and moves forward according to the momentum it acquires. At a particular level of momentum it takes-off. It cannot simply help lying there. This is exactly what capable poetry does to human mind. Poetry imparts speed and momentum to human mind and the momentum gained thus makes it take-off.

Poetry moves minds. Perhaps it's moving powers are far greater than the actual individual and social experiences of a person, considering the fact that poetry also contains reasonable arguments, logic and philosophy to master a given situation in human life. Thus when poetry moves minds, it is actually moving societies and nations. It is an undeniable fact that the great literary epics, whether it be the Ramayana, Mahabharatha, The Illiad, The Odessey, The Divine Comedy, The Song Of Roland or The Beowulf formed and decided the national character of India, Greece, Italy, France or England. They were what in which their national heritage, culture and civilization were preserved for the posterities. And they are what generations still look upto for inspiration and guidance. That poetry makes nothing happen is a fallacy. Pablo Neruda's Canto General and The Third Residence On Earth has been a fountain head, source and reservoire of revolutionary inspiration for the whole world since it's publication. Mayakovski's poems including Let The Rail Workers Awaken have been the most restricting force in Lenin's Russia. Premiere Lenin even said: I don't like this man, but his poem Those Who Hold Committees Daily tells well people's opinions about us committee-holders. This poem contained just two simple lines: Everyday committee, committee, committee: Nothing happens, nothing happens, and nothing happens.

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Originally Posted by AuntShecky

Can there ever be such a thing as a "thought" without words to express it?

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What about visual art? And music (sans lyrics, of course)? These both convey thoughts without words--often times more effectively than any words can.

As to the original query, I always think of a certain type of poetry when one asks for a practical value of poetry (I realize this is not the same query as the OP, but I think still close enough), and those are War poems, particularly some of the very vivid WWI poems. These poems convey the feelings of being in war--of what it felt like to be in the trenches and surrounded by death. No text book I've read does this.

I guess one could argue that there is no value in understanding the feelings of those who fought in wars, but I can't see how there isn't value in understanding the horror of war.

Well the original posting appeared two years ago, but yours fooly still maintains some, if not all, the opinions expressed there in (apart from typing "latter" when I meant "former.")

There is a danger when we try to assign a work detail to art, literature, and poetry, attempt to make social workers out of literature, or teachers of youth, or consider the arts to be cheerleaders for the middle class. These issues were addressed in another different LitNet thread.

Even so, poetry does matter, but not in any pragmatic sense. It is worth reading, and in some cases, worth writing, but it is unfair to ask poetry to do anything other than to be itself.

Still, I wonder what Dr. Williams really meant with these lines:

It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.

I really have tried to get into poetry but blake is about the only pure poet i can really appreciate a little. I much think good prose is much more profound than poetry though that may be the opposite of classical thought.

As for thought,i am 100% sure that we can think non-linguistically,i mean what is a feeling? When pain first registers you dont internally say 'ouch' do you,you just feel the pain.

I read somewhere once that poetry is a good thing to study for people who want to go to law school. Both poetry and law involve difficult texts I guess the main idea was. Philosophy too of course.

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Originally Posted by Theunderground

I really have tried to get into poetry but blake is about the only pure poet i can really appreciate a little. I much think good prose is much more profound than poetry though that may be the opposite of classical thought.

As for thought,i am 100% sure that we can think non-linguistically,i mean what is a feeling? When pain first registers you dont internally say 'ouch' do you,you just feel the pain.

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What poets have you tried reading ?

I'm coming late to the party, but in terms of whether poetry makes anything happen, I think there is a distinct sense in which it does. While it may or may not directly engender drastic social or political change in the present, if we narrow our view to something like the history of ideas (broadly conceived), then poetry has had a demonstrable effectiveness.

For example, any deep engagement with Nietzsche or Heidegger must take into account the incredible influence which Hölderlin's work had on their respective systems of thought. Though this is a specific instance and I can't speak with any knowledge to the dialectic between poetry and philosophy outside of 19th and 20th century Germany, I would expect to find similar developments in other areas/traditions.

Whether this (perhaps narrow) sphere of influence is of lasting significance to the larger world, or if it reinforces an image of poetry as marginal and unimportant, I leave it up to others to decide--though I would undoubtedly espouse the former position.

I have read bits of nearly all the great poets east and west,why do you ask?

Originally Posted by AuntShecky:

This is another extremely valid and significant philosophical
question:

Can there ever be such a thing as a "thought" without words to express it?

I would assume so. Thus we have dance and painting and music and other such forms of artistic expression. One of the problems that artists face within these genre is that criticism exclusively takes the form of the written word and the written word literally cannot fully grasp the non-written art form and as a result such writers often lean toward a focus upon that which has a strong narrative element. It is far easier to discuss and dissect this in words:

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5098/...7b0b0a27_b.jpg

than it is to attempt the same with something like this:

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5256/...49a2024e_z.jpg

The Comedian-I think that we can have thoughts without words when we are infants and have no words. But once we have language, then thoughts without words are impossible. I don't know why, but based on my observations with the language development of my two daughters, it sure seems so to me.

Of course, I'm no psychologist.

Virgil-But how do you know we don't have thoughts before the language comes to us? As I just read your post this thought came to me, but I really didn't formulate the language until after I started to articulate it. It's my perception that there is a millisecond of thought before language shapes it.

Maybe we continue to have non-linguistic thoughts after we develop language. If we do, that non-linguistic thinking is some weird, weird, stuff. I mean, non-linguistic thinking has to have some form, right? If not language, then what?

I am obviously with Virgil on this. I would assume... first of all... that human beings are capable of thought without... beyond written/spoken language. Such language is simply an abstraction that must be learned. The child prior to speech thinks. Helen Keller... prior to developing a non-spoken language surely was capable of thought. Our dreams and day-dreams involve thought and often take the form of visual images... sounds... even other senses.

Looking at the two paintings above, that of the famous Guernica by Picasso and that of the landscape by Bonnard one can grasp Picasso's achievement and put it in words far easier than one can Bonnard's painting. Bonnard was and remains known as a "painter's painter". A great many painters recognize something in Bonnard's paintings that can't be simply put into words... something that those not highly attuned to the purely visual fail to grasp.

As a painter I can assure you that I think in the purely visual quite often. I am attuned to certain visual stimuli and think in images quite often before/beyond thinking in words. Unlike some artist, I am also a great lover of literature... an obsessive reader... and thus I have the ability to put much into the written or spoken word after the fact. I would assume that something similar exist in the mind of the musician or composer in terms of thinking in sound, in the mind of the dancer... and perhaps even the athlete in thinking in terms of movement and space, and in the mind of the mathematician in thinking through numbers... a language no less invented than music, art, or the word.

Any biologist will just point that Whales and dolphins not only think, but also teach and have fun. They will point birds can learn from experience and teach it to other birds. And that humans developed social organization and use of utensils even before any form of developed language, imagine written language.

This is all speculation.

First, I would say that I totally agree with JBI on the aims of poetry. I totally agree with Virgil that we do have thoughts before language.

The reason why we think we don't have thoughts without language is because we don't realize how fast the brain moves. Thoughts literally flash. The thing we perceive as a "thought" is probably actually our attempt to put the flash (the synapse firing) into words. And what are we trying to put into words? In some ways, everything we say or "think" shares a commonality with what JBI said the goal of poetry was...to name the unnameable, to describe that which can't be described. Which really, is everything, because what language is trying to communicate is very experiential.

I'm sorry I am so bad at expressing myself in language, but hopefully when I finish Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, I can write a little bit more about it on my blog (and with better formed "thoughts").

I agree with I. A. Richards' claim that "poetry is capable of saving us." What Richards meant by this extravagent claim was that the poetry of genius represents the highest level of adaptive psychological organization imaginable, hence we ought to turn to it as a model and pattern for the development of our own experiences. Unlike religion and science, poetry enables us to fulfill our nature as rationally and emotionally complex beings. Whereas the former depend heavily of "suppressions and restrictions" in order to make determinate "statements" about life, poetry "realizes" or dramatizes its content in a way that allows us to experience rather than merely know or believe. Thus the basis of aesthetic response is "imaginative assent" rather than "verifiable belief." Poetry is "the completest mode of utterance" and the standard of "unmitigated experience." In a world of confusion, it can supply us with systems of experience, or "attitudes," that attune us to existence without neutralizing it (as in science), simplifying it (as in popular literature), or falsifying it (as in religion). All this amounts to an argument that the poetry of genius ought to be the central mythos of modern civilization.

By the way, if anyone is interested in learning about the "value" of poetry as poetry, I suggest a return to the grandfathers of twentieth-century English criticism, namely I. A. Richards, F. R. Leavis, Cleanth Brooks, W. K. Wimsatt, and Northrop Frye. Steer clear of postmodernism, cultural studies, and postcolonialism. In my opinion, at least, a strong interest in these discourses constitutes a departure from literature as such.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ezekiel 4:9

I agree with I. A. Richards' claim that "poetry is capable of saving us." What Richards meant by this extravagent claim was that the poetry of genius represents the highest level of adaptive psychological organization imaginable, hence we ought to turn to it as a model and pattern for the development of our own experiences. Unlike religion and science, poetry enables us to fulfill our nature as rationally and emotionally complex beings. Whereas the former depend heavily of "suppressions and restrictions" in order to make determinate "statements" about life, poetry "realizes" or dramatizes its content in a way that allows us to experience rather than merely know or believe. Thus the basis of aesthetic response is "imaginative assent" rather than "verifiable belief." Poetry is "the completest mode of utterance" and the standard of "unmitigated experience." In a world of confusion, it can supply us with systems of experience, or "attitudes," that attune us to existence without neutralizing it (as in science), simplifying it (as in popular literature), or falsifying it (as in religion). All this amounts to an argument that the poetry of genius ought to be the central mythos of modern civilization.

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This is a big claim and not one that I would support. I think poetry can have an effect, but only as part of a movement or a cultural shift. I don't see any validity in the claim that

"realizes" or dramatizes its content in a way that allows us to experience rather than merely know or believe

Poetry is a construction of language, and in no way can supplant experience or belief. It can have a powerful emotional effect, and can introduce radical ideas thought, but rarely does it change lives unless it is part of a wider cultural experience that is acted upon by the reader.

As far I recall, this works if the reader (or viewer) carry this experiences within, so he revify the feelings of such sittuation and may (or not) reconsider it. Not as he living an experience that belonged to other (the poet). Dante loves in a way, I love in another...