do you think that sometimes this kind of ventilation, these linebreaks
serves to heighten, make vivid? I think this "poetry" often allows us to
move out with the experience, through regions of thought. for the lines to
be poetry, however, they must be charged, fitted with breath, rhythm. and
they can never be not of their own. the end of their work is the end of
ours...the poem. everywhere in the piece we go we have to feel a sounding
made, something hallowed, hard-won, endeared as experience, and so to us,
through what some other has made of it, has landed on, laid claim to by
discovery. So, the litmus seems to be: if the poet and reader get to that
place via the poem, that's where they want to be, and those lines are a
poem. Otherwise not.
bst, Gerald Schwartz [log in to unmask]
----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas Barbour" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2001 10:22 AM
Subject: Re: POETRYETC Digest - 20 Apr 2001 to 21 Apr 2001 (#2001-4)
> Ruark's comment that
> >well it makes it sound better, the lines mark the
> >space for the voice or song to move in, it is like a
> >phonogram, the edge of the lines are the profile of
> >the inner and outer breath of the poet/thinker, so the
> >lines are a sort of sounding score so that readers can
> >accurately trace a writers
> >poetic/philosphical/political intentions. It really is
> >quite simple
>
> seems useful -- when applied to a poetic form of at least some complexity.
> But I'm not sure it answers the original question about breaking a
sentence
> up & pretending it's poetry. Indeed, a prose poem, in which syntax, the
> sound of words, the use of imagery & all the rest (if wanted), will have
> great rhytmic intensity & play than these one word per line things we have
> been seeing. The single sentence, or pair of sentences, just does not
allow
> for either much thinking or poetry. What we've been getting is, indeed,
> 'quite simple,' but I'm afraid I mean that very differently than Ruark
> seems to. As far as that goes, even the rather lamentable pieces by Normam
> Mailer were more fun, a bit more complex...
>
> Douglas Barbour
> Department of English
> University of Alberta
> Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5
> (h) [780] 436 3320 (b) [780] 492 0521
> http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
>
> The trees
> have ears
>
> The moon
> stalks lovers
>
> Nelson Ball
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