Marcus Bales wrote:
> ... But it's a meaningless claim to claim it's poetry where
> > poetry and prose are the same thing. There is no honorific to it, you see!
> > What's the honor in claiming to be a poet where a poet is just a prose
> > writer by a different name? What does it get you to call yourself a poet
> > when you refuse to distinguish poetry from anything else?
On 3 Aug 2005 at 14:09, Stephen Vincent wrote:
> So meter is a form of branding (MFA credential, product placement and all of
> that)? On that you are exactly right, Marcus. No honor among prose writers
> faking it as poets. Protect the territory, poets, Iamb by Iamb. Oy.<
I'm criticizing the notion that poetry is an honorific so that it's not territory
worth defending iam by iamb. What makes something poetry ought not
be whether it's good or not but whether it meets the criteria for being
poetry or not that are not hard to agree on: such as, for example, that it
is written in metered language. That's easy and simple enough to be
non-controversial, isn't it?
The controversy seems to start when people who write in non-metered
language want to call themselves poets because they think that being
known as a poet has some value, but they don't want to have to do
anything particular in order to make a valid claim. They don't want to
have to meet any standards at all. They want to claim they're poets
because ... well, because they want to claim they're poets! Yeah, that's
the ticket. We'll just say we're poets!
> ... many of the folks here are working to engage you in a flexible
> give and take around issues that are clearly not iron-clad. At least, I
> suspect, the many of us who enjoy expanding and testing the formal - and
> many times, counter-formal - reaches of the poem. <
The distinction between "formal" and "free verse" poetry is just what I'm
challenging, though. I hold that it's not enough to claim you're a poet, or
your every golden word is a poem, or poetry, or if you do, there can be
no honor in it since any idiot can make that claim, and if you hold that
it's okay for any idiot to make that claim, and be honored for it, then
what distinguishes you from an idiot?
Tell me, do, what makes something poetry for you -- or you, or you. If it's
an honorific for excellence, what constitutes excellence? Is there a
difference between excellent prose and excellent poetry -- or is all
excellence in writing "poetry"? If all excellence in writing is not "poetry",
what distinguishes this excellence that is not poetry from that excellence
that is?
These are important questions that people who claim to be poets ought
to think about, and to have some sort of at least provisional answers to.
Marcus
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