On 3/8/05 12:21 AM, "Marcus Bales" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Poetry is like a 100 metre race in one way: both are artificially
> conceived, a narrowing down of a set of rules out of a broader human
> experience. We say the record-holder of the 100 metre race is "the
> world's fastest human", for example, as though the only running ever
> done was done at the 100 metre distance. Also, still similarly, poets and
> their advocates make a similar claim about poetry, though, don't they --
> that poetry is the best use of language or the highest art, that the title
> "poet" and the description "poetry" are honorific.
> 
> It seems to me that it is the combination of the claim that "poet" and
> "poetry" are both an honorific with the claim that there is no way to tell
> the difference between "poet" and "non-poet" or "poetry" and "prose"
> that lead directly to the sporting competitiveness you deplore. So long
> as anyone can play and there are no rules, what do you expect? As for
> whether any given behavior is cheating when there are no rules, well,
> come on! If there are no rules, there is no cheating.

Hi Marcus

It's the terms, and the assumptions behind the terms, which bother me: the
idea that "broader human experience" is predicated on a "set of rules" which
is then "narrowed down" in poetry.  Poetry, like all art, is an
aestheticisation of experience and thought, imagined or real, and to
aestheticise is to break rules as much as make them (one exists in the
other).  Each poem has its own rules, which may or may not relate to
generally accepted conventions of what a poem might be.  Whether any given
reader accepts or enjoys those rules is entirely up for grabs.  There are
poems I enjoy much more than others, poems which I think of as great, which
is a function I think of how the complexities of their language embraces the
complexities and contradictions of experience, and also of the boldness of
the process of aestheticisation; which is to say, a mind that can, for
example, decide to write in the vernacular in a context where that is
considered vulgar (Dante) is more interesting than one that abides by the
dominant conventions.  Courage is after all a large part of writing, of
making any art.  It is not that distinctions and discriminations are not to
be made; it is that simplistic divisions falsify the whole process of
writing and reading. I think that's the truth of it: any attempt to make
rigid distinctions only evades the real question, the real dilemma.

And prose - good prose, at least - depends quite as much on crafting of
rhythm as any poem.

Best

A


Alison Croggon

Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Editor, Masthead:  http://masthead.net.au
Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com