Oh no! Everything's going to the dogs, doom's around the corner, the
bomb's about to drop, Nobody can write Poetry...
Stephen Fry in his recent book on writing poetry flays fashionably
*against* vers libres, calling most of it dribble, IIRC. OTOH, I was
reading a review of Anne Stevenson's collected which said that her
formal poetry lacked the pressure of her vers libres.
I think you can be banal and write crap whether or not you follow da
roolz. It's hard to write good poetry. It's hard to be good at
anything.
I trust the tale rather than the teller. One wonders if any of the
Romantic Poets would be able to face to 2 hour paper on the position
of enjambment in late 18th Century poetry :-)
Roger
On 11/12/05, MJ Walker <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I don't really know what you're saying here, David. Most novelists can't
> write either, if you go by what is actually published and then consider
> the probable enormous number of the unpublished, just as with poetry.
> You don't really have to work so hard to write very bad prose. Whether
> one has to know what an anacrusis is to write good poetry, considering
> that as a term it applies to quantitative verse, not really to the
> stressed verse of Germanic languages, is a moot point. If "banality
> posing as poetry" killed the art, the art would have died a long time
> ago. Consider the huge amounts of dull sententious plodfests written in
> the 18th & 19th century in England alone. One might even be grateful for
> the relative taciturnity of more recent poetasters. Catalexis doesn't
> really Make much diff'rence, does it, Dave? But the real question is why
> you spend time listening to people, who rather like M.Jourdain (it was
> prose in his case), don't realize they're producing boring old iambic
> pentameters a lot of the time anyway.
> Cheers
> Martin
>
> David Bircumshaw wrote:
>
> >I've become interested lately, as apart from being excruciatingly aware, of
> >the laziness of poetry. Poetry, as an art, along with elements of visual
> >arts, has become a last refuge of the bone-idle, at least, if you write a
> >novel, or a play, you have to put your back into it, it takes work, poetry,
> >although, because of its extremely primitive basics, can be like a
> >five-minute-fix. This is not to say the withering and murderous demands that
> >poetry as an art does exact, but there's kind of fuzzy notion arounmd that
> >anyone can write poetry. No they can't, and what's more most poets most
> >can't write it either (to order), or to acceptance. It comes when the gods
> >say, and with an awful lot in the background support. This may sound rather
> >elitist, it is, it also is very democratic: anyone can do, but most can't.
> >
> >The worst thing of all is the proliferation of banality posing as poetry, it
> >killls the art.
> >
> >i get so tired of hearing people who are totally ignorant of the least bit
> >of metrics (you have to know the rules in order to break them - that's what
> >I do) or the provenance of words droning on in my ear. a friend of mine who
> >is keen amateur singer, this just as a chorister in a provincial city's
> >classical choir, has to do one full and one semi-rhearsal twice a week, plus
> >other bits of practice, twice a week plus, just to be in the background in
> >a performance. Most people I know who think they're poets look at you as if
> >the boat's gone out if you say 'catalexis' or 'caesura' or even
> >'enjambement' to them. Not to mention 'tonic' and sub-tonic' stress or , God
> >help us, 'anacrusis'.
> >
> >One guy I know, who thinks he's a poet, told me recently he went on a course
> >where he learnt about technique - it was called 'iambic pentameter'.
> >
> >Lord have mercy.
> >
> >Best
> >
> >Dave
> >
> >
> >
>
> --
> M.J.Walker - no blog - no webpage - no idea
>
> Nous ne faisons que nous entregloser. - Montaigne
>
--
http://www.badstep.net/
http://www.cb1poetry.org.uk/
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