Why is it that when something really interesting starts to get swished about
on The Works my computer starts to get the monk on? (Yorkshire expression
for sulking...). So I'm chipping in after a lot's been chipped away! But I'm
going to do it anyway!
Like Helen I too would strongly recommend “Strong Words” a book by W.N.
Herbert & Matthew Hollis (Published by Bloodaxe in 2000). If you can’t get
hold of a copy yourself then get a Library to get a copy – but it’s not a
book you can read simply in a week or so. It’s a compendium of
thoughts/essays/reflections about poetry from the 20th Century. (There’s no
finer way to spend any book tokens you get for Christmas!). After getting to
the end it's fascinating to realise what a varied art we're working with!
(And then you start reading bits again and again: saying "H'm" or "Nah!"
And Marcus’s list is fascinating too! How varied! But how do I order it? By
dates? Trying to see how thoughts about poetry have changed? By movements –
there’s a stroll of Romantics, there’s a poesy of Georgians, there’s a
cocktail bar of Modernists, etc? Or how? I guess, in our Postmodern era we
can more simply Pick & Mix… I could spend hours shuffling each quote around
and seeing how they combine, contradict, collude…
But instead I’ll offer something else!
I guess I sometimes wonder not so much what poetry is, but rather where it
comes from. I once thought it came from somewhere in here - he writes,
thumping his heart (emotion recollected, etc.) and then I wondered if it
came from here – he writes tapping his head to indicate some deep part of
the brain or mind (a more 20th century, Freudian/modernist perspective). But
then I started thinking that it may not come from deep inside me at all. It
might be “out there” and not “in here.” (I back up what I’m saying by
saying: “Language comes from outside us, doesn’t it?” )
Then I got to thinking about rhythm, and thought it was my body - and not my
heart (Romanticism) or mind (Modernism) - that made me aware that sound and
rhythm isn’t just external, I had rhythm built in.
So, in the end, I began thinking that any appreciation of poetry has to
include an appreciation of language (and words) linked with sound (and
rhythm). Alongside this realisation came a west-wind breeze of poems that
lasted for ages and ages. My ears began to do a lot of my writing (they
still do!).
I link this (am I wandering off the point here? Perhaps not…) with the many,
many, many, poems that have been written in the 3rd person in the past few
years. (If you disagree, OK… maybe I’m thinking of the poems that are read –
I’m thinking about the books that have been bought). The "I" voice takes
second place. I sense poetry, at present, is just beyond our fingertips,
it’s more out there than in here, and we have to stretch out to find it.
But, I might still hear, “There’s still plenty of poems written in the first
person!” and I can agree – and add that plenty of them are assuming a
persona, they’re the poet writing as someone else, they’re still “out there”
not “in here.”
Any comments?
Bob
(who's also reading thro the poems, there's some real crackers!, that've
been posted in the last few days!)
>From: Mike Horwood <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Mike: Emotion in poetry
>Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 17:24:44 +0200
>
> > A great collection and each interesting in its own right, and after
>reading them all and meditating deeply I still don´t know what `poetry´ is,
>which is Samuel Johnson´s point, of course.
>
>
>Mike
>
>
>
> > Lähettäjä: Marcus Bales <[log in to unmask]>
> > Päiväys: 2003/11/06 to PM 03:49:31 GMT+02:00
> > Vastaanottaja: [log in to unmask]
> > Aihe: Re: Mike: Emotion in poetry
> >
> > On 5 Nov 2003 at 18:39, Sue Scalf wrote:
> > > I don't think any poet who is worth his salt would think of poetry as
> > > just an emotional outpouring that would necessarily produce something
> > > great or even good. Neither is it just something crafted. Craft
> > > alone won't do it. Wordsworth called it "Emotion recollected in
> > > tranquility." In other words, it is both. Art lies therein. Sue
> >
> > Prose goes all the way to the margin, poetry doesn't.
> > Jeremy Bentham
> >
> > "Both in art and in literature, the function of the frame is
> > fundamental. It is the frame that marks the boundary between the
> > picture and what is outside. It allows the picture to exist,
> > isolating it from the rest; but at the same time, it recalls- and
> > somehow stands for - everything that remains out of the picture. I
> > might venture a definition: we consider poetic a production in which
> > each individual experience acquires prominence through its detachment
> > from the general continuum, while it retains a glint of that
> > unlimited vastness."
> > Italo Calvino,1985
> >
> > POETRY, n. A form of expression peculiar to the Land beyond the
> > Magazines.
> > Ambrose Bierce
> >
> > "In science one tries to tell people, in a way as to be understood by
> > everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's
> > the exact opposite."
> > Paul Dirac
> >
> > "It is not rhyming and versing that maketh poetry. One may be a poet
> > without versing, and a versifyer without poetry."
> > Philip Sidney, ~Apologie for Poetrie~
> >
> > "What is poetry? Why, Sir, it is much easier to say what it is not.
> > We all know what light is, but it is not easy to tell what it is."
> > Samuel Johnson ~Boswell's Life~
> > Things that are true expressed in words that are beautiful.
> > Dante
> >
> > the art of uniting pleasure with truth by calling imagination to the
> > help of reason.
> > Samuel Johnson
> >
> > the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.
> > William Wordsworth
> >
> > musical thought
> > Thomas Carlyle
> >
> > emotion put into measure.
> > Thomas Hardy
> >
> > If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know
> > that it is poetry.
> > Emily Dickinson
> >
> > speech framed...to be heard for its own sake and interest even over
> > and above its interest and meaning.
> > Gerard Manley Hopkins
> >
> > a way of remembering that which it would impoverish us to forget.
> > Robert Frost
> >
> > a revelation in words by means of the words.
> > Wallace Stevens
> >
> > Poetry is prose bewitched.
> > Mina Loy
> >
> > not the assertion that something is true, but the making of that
> > truth more fully real to us.
> > T. S. Eliot
> >
> > the clear expression of mixed feelings.
> > W. H. Auden
> >
> > the body of linguistic constructions that men usually refer to as
> > poems.
> > J. V. Cunningham
> >
> > hundreds of things coming together at the right moment.
> > Elizabeth Bishop
> >
> > A poem is something that penetrates for an instant into the
> > unconscious.
> > Robert Bly
> >
> > Poetry is the synthesis of hyancinths and bisquits. --Carl Sandburg
> >
> > Poetry is the deification of reality. --Edith Sitwell
> >
> > the story of a soul. --Czeslaw Milosz
> >
> > getting something right in language. --Howard Nemerov
> >
> > Poetry is the great stimulation of life... Poetry is redemption from
> > pessimism.
> > Susan Howe
> > A poem is anything said in such a way or put on the page in such a
> > way as to invite from the hearer or reader a certain kind of
> > attention.
> > William Stafford
> >
> > I would define poetry as the rhythmical creation of beauty.
> > Edgar Allan Poe
> >
> > Prose: words in their best order; poetry: the best words in the best
> > order.
> > S. T. Coleridge
> >
> > The art of employing words in such a manner as to produce an illusion
> > of the imagination...
> > Macaulay
> >
> > The record of the best and happiest moments of the best and happiest
> > minds...
> > Shelley
> >
> > Speech framed to be heard for its own sake and interest even over and
> > above its interest of meaning.
> > Gerard Manley Hopkins
> >
> > The rhythmic, inevitably narrative, movement from and overclothed
> > blindness to a naked vision...
> > Dylan Thomas
> >
> > Language that tells us, through a more or less emotional reaction,
> > something that can not be said...
> > E. A. Robinson
> >
> > The art of saying everything and reducing it to nothing...
> > Barbara Hyett
> >
> > POEM: a composition designed to convey a vivid and imaginative sense
> > of experience, characterized by the use of condensed language chosen
> > for its sound and suggestive power as well as its meaning, and by the
> > use of such literary techniques as structured meter, natural
> > cadences, rhyme, or metaphor.
> > American Heritage Dictionary
> >
> > A poem is "a sonorous molded shape of form".
> > Osip Mandelstam
> >
> > A verbal artifact which must be as skillfully and solidly constructed
> > as a table or a motorcyle.
> > W. H. Auden
> >
> > Poetry amounts to arranging words with the greatest specific gravity
> > in the most effective and externally inevitable sequence.
> > Joseph Brodsky
> >
> > A poem is an instant of lucidity in which the entire organism
> > participates.
> > Charles Simic
> >
> > A poem is energy transferred from where the poet got it... by way of
> > the poem itself, all the way over to the reader.
> > Charles Olson
> >
> > A momentary stay against confusion. --Robert Frost
> > Poeta Fit, Non Nascitur
> > Lewis Carroll
> >
> > Poetry is not prosody. It is not technique. Poetry is born out of
> > revelation to one's self of the meaning of your own life.
> > Stanley Kunitz
> >
> > Poetry is like fish: if it's fresh, it's good; if it's stale, it's
> > bad; and if you're not certain, try it on the cat.
> > Osbert Sitwell
> >
> > Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes
> > familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.
> > Shelley
> >
> > Out of our quarrels with others we make rhetoric. Out of our quarrels
> > with ourselves we make poetry.
> > William Butler Yeats
> >
> > You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.
> > Mario Cuomo
> >
> > The objects the imitator represents are actions.
> > -- Aristotle
> >
> > Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion;
> > it is not the expression of personality but an escape from
> > personality.
> > T. S. Eliot
> >
> > Literature is language charged with meaning.
> > Ezra Pound
> >
> > A man can learn more about poetry by really knowing and examining a
> > few of the best poems than by meandering about among a great many. --
> > Ezra Pound
> >
> > True wit is Nature to advantage dress'd,
> > What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd.
> > Alexander Pope
> >
> > Silence can be complex too, but you do not get far with silence.
> > William Carlos Williams
> >
> > Experience has taught me, when I am shaving of a morning, to keep
> > watch over my thoughts, because if a line of poetry strays into my
> > memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act.
> > A. E. Housman
> >
> > For us there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
> > -- T. S. Eliot
> >
> > No data without experiment.
> > Sophocles, tr. Ezra Pound
> >
> > Say what you will in two
> > Words and get through.
> > Long, frilly
> > Palaver is silly.
> > Marie-Francoise-Catherine de Beauveau, tr. Ezra Pound
> >
> > Interviewer: Doesn't it embarrass you to see Bobby trying to learn
> > how to play slide on stage? Jerry Garcia: Um, yeah. but the point
> > is, it doesn't embarrass him.
> >
> > Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the World.
> > P B Shelley
> >
> > It is difficult
> > to get the news from poems
> > yet men die miserably every day
> > for lack
> > of what is found there.
> > -- William Carlos Williams
> >
> > ... the great end
> > Of poesy, that it should be a friend
> > To soothe the cares, and lift the thoughts of man.
> > -- Keats
> >
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