Hello grasshopper,
Thanks for your comments on this topic. I can certainly go along with many of the points you made. For instance, it is clear that in the past poets have been regarded as, and expected to be, wise, superior and prophetic and delivered themselves of universal truths accordingly. Nowadays no one is going to accept a poet playing such a role. But that must also mean that the modern readerīs attitude to discursive poetry is going to be very different to the attitude of readers in those earlier times. I do not imagine that a reader of today, presented with a poem that contains a statement by the poet, is necessarily going to accept it as the gospel. I mean that given the modern relationship that exists between reader and writer, a relationship of equality, as you say, it is quite to be expected that the reader will turn round and disagree. I donīt see any problem with that. Also, I donīt quite go along with the equating of making a statement and lecturing. In a relationship of equality, either party might state an opinion, if that is what they wish to do. I should emphasise that I do not by this mean a hectoring, lecturing tone. I donīt think that discursive poetry has to adopt such a tone. I think, furthermore, that the poet can use the discursive technique to mask an uncertainty. By putting it in the form of a statement and inviting the reader to disagree, he/she also invites the reader to consider the subject and form an opinion. This is, in fact, how Sally James responded the poem I posted. So hereīs another nutmeg: you donīt have to agree with the apparent message/meaning of the discursive poem. Not anymore than you have to read the images in other forms of poetry in precisely the same way that the writer saw them.
Another interesting point you made was this: that the discursive poem must be precise to be convincing. I agree that the statements or meaning the poet has put into the poem should be clearly expressed, but as my last point indicates, this is not the same thing as presenting a clear thesis in the way a scientist might.
Does this make any sense?
Finally, on the subject of being didactic, I wonder what your opinion of Helen Dunmoreīs poem about the Gulf War is. I donīt have it in front of me, but the lines that refer to the burned corpse hanging out of the windscreen of a lorry with bubbles rimming its eye sockets. She something to the effect `the body ....is not trying to show you something / it is showing you somethingī. This seems to me to be a didactic statement, albeit making use of an image, of the most powerful kind.
Best wishes, Mike
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