Well hello me friends and fellow runners in our perpetual road to total enlightenment (wow that was supererogatory)!
I'm looking for essays on the divine art of the poetics, preferably by those who aren't completely ambisinister in it themselves. I think Lorca has written something on this subject but I loathe to find it since I really aren’t that certain. Now it doesn’t have to be an essay, it could very well just be writings on the subject.
Cheers people!
To reading or to writing - to reading, I think the best book for a medium level is still I. A. Richard's Practical criticism, though it is dated in approach, it is useful in establishing a critical vocabulary and beginner focus. From there, I would say you should find a reference book on rhetoric, and one on Scansion. I would recommend Adams's Poetic Designs for Scansion, and it has a little rhetoric, but if you want to take things further, you will need another reference book.
Those are useful in understanding - in terms of writing, if you are serious about it, don't write anything until you have read countless books, as often people start writing mediocre verse and think they are clever, and then end up going nowhere with it.
Unless I misunderstand you, and you are playing into Sidney's notion of the poetic world being a gateway towards Edenic vision, which he established in his "A Defense of Poesy". Really you need to be more specific - much has been written on a wide range of poetic topics.
It seems as though you think I'm looking for "Poetry for Dummies", probably because I wasn't clear enough. I'm quite well-versed in poetry, I can't write anything worthwhile yet, but I'm not looking for "How to write poetry". The catalyst for this post and the plea for essays on poetic expression was probably listening to Nick Cave's (the songwriter) brilliant two lectures on the love song. In which Cave talks about how love letters, love songs or love poems can serve as expressions of "taking possession" over someone. As a mediator to shorten the emotional (and physical) distance between two lovers. How poetry and lyrics is flesh made word.
His two lectures really intrigued me, so something akin to this is what I'm looking for. A philosophical, metaphysical and allegorical discourse of some kind.
His lectures was also very well written, in his trademark, baroque, quasi-old-testament dark rhetoric.
Haha, am I making myself clear? I doubt it. Anyway, what would be nice is to see something that the poets themselves have written on the subject.
Thanks for your time
Last edited by hampusforev; 01-07-2009 at 09:20 AM.
Try T. S. Eliot's essays, John Keat's letter where he describes negative capability, the non-fiction work of Coleridge and Wordsworth, notably the intro to Lyric Ballads, P.K. Page's special in the Malahat review (if you are interested, I can dig up the edition), and there must be major anthologies. Generally most contemporary poets, to an extent, and many classic poets, wrote poetic theories and notes on their process, as well as many scholars wrote works on the processes of many poets. You may also want to try Pope's Essay on criticism if his work is your thing, personally I don't particularly care for him.
Cheers! Just what I'm looking for. I'm partial to Pope's wit, but I'm not a avid fan. Of course! T.S Eliot is pretty much looked down upon in our modern political correct Sweden universities, I really like The Waste Land and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, I haven't heard any scholars mentioned his quite prolific output of poetry criticism though.
Now, I assume you're not all that familiar with the Swedish library system; but where would you suggest looking? I just can't think of where to look.
Much is available online - though, I think the French output on these subjects seems somehow, for some reason, greater than the English one, and the French views can only be found by a speaker of French.
As for English, try Project Gutenberg, or ask a librarian. Eliot's work has been collected, and is not to expensive.
How is Eliot looked down upon? If anything, in terms of English literature, he was the most modernist of all modernists. I can't see 20th century English, and to a lesser extent, Western poetry without him.
Well I don't know how it is in Canadian universities, but in Swedish ones there's certainly a degree of snobbishness about reading Eliot, Pound or Wallace Stevens. It might be our very inert scandinavian attitude of "not thinking you are something special". The modernist poets might be seen as a bit pretentious and with delusions of grandeur. Now this is not a sentiment I share, but it's nevertheless part of the Swedish culture.
Anyway, thanks for the recommendations, I'll check into them at the nearest library.
Stephen Fry's The Ode Less Travelled. It will make you laugh out loud again and again so don't try reading it in your university library. Very 'high-brow' but very very accessible.
Here is Fry (and Laurie as we can't separate the two) for you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx_YY_frOvQ
And here is a lesson in literary history:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m450vRV1WZc
Still The Ode Less Travelled is a serious and very knowledgeable book:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ode-Less-Tra...1425550&sr=8-1
Last edited by Kafka's Crow; 01-08-2009 at 12:09 PM.
"The farther he goes the more good it does me. I don’t want philosophies, tracts, dogmas, creeds, ways out, truths, answers, nothing from the bargain basement. He is the most courageous, remorseless writer going and the more he grinds my nose in the sh1t the more I am grateful to him..."
-- Harold Pinter on Samuel Beckett
How weird. You'd think delusions of grandeur would be utterly compatible with snobbishness. Seriously, though, if anyone's telling you there's something wrong with liking these poets, they're full of ****. Do the Swedes have the same attitude to Ingmar Bergman? Strindberg? You could just as easily (and just as spuriously) call them pretentious, and they're Swedish.Originally Posted by hampusforev
Why should the Swedish read American poets? And why should they, if they do, study American Literature without Pound, Eliot and Stevens? There must be some context to the above remark. You can't read modernism (at least modern literature written in English) without studying Eliot and, specially Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein. I think the remark about Swedish universities is out of context. We don't have to study American poets if we are not studying American Literature.
"The farther he goes the more good it does me. I don’t want philosophies, tracts, dogmas, creeds, ways out, truths, answers, nothing from the bargain basement. He is the most courageous, remorseless writer going and the more he grinds my nose in the sh1t the more I am grateful to him..."
-- Harold Pinter on Samuel Beckett
To some extent, but there was a great deal of crossover into other languages, which can cause some problems. But on that notion, I think the Swedes, being the most read people in the world (in terms of books per year read per person) have a somewhat wider range than just their own literature. In terms of reading though, I think the influence of Eliot outside of the English language warrants reading him even if you aren't an American, or British specialist.
Strangely enough, when I travel, I see so many copies of translations of Eliot's Possums, which is kind of funny, given that it is most definitely his worst work - but I guess that is him at his most universal.
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