Jon says that people ask what poetry is? Well, that's a feature, it's
the most elastic of genres. At the other end of the extreme is the
expectation of poetry to fulfill a certain niche, which it may not.
I think that those who ask that question expect the reply to be: well,
it rhymes;-) Well, only sometimes.
Roger
On 8/25/07, MJ Walker <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> ? Didn't get that feature/bug remark, Roger. - About Jon's point with
> reference to music: well, saying that x is not y is a form of
> definition, and in my youth a lot of older people were continually
> saying "That's not music!" Pop & rock especially were "just noise", but
> to my father, a Wagnerite, the 5th symphony of Carl Nielsen was also
> "not music". And so it went. And the same applies to poetry - people
> were quite anxious about free verse etc, way back when. And I can
> remember discussions like "Is it a novel?" & what a novel needs to be a
> novel, in the context of works by Beckett, for example, discussions not
> actually conducted by aestheticians.
> mj
>
> Roger Day wrote:
>
> >isn't that a feature not a bug?
> >
> >On 8/25/07, Jon Corelis <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>"What is poetry?"
> >>
> >>To me, the question is not nearly so interesting as the fact that it's
> >>asked and that no one's surprised that it's asked.
> >>
> >>"What is music?" The question would only occur to a few cloistered
> >>aestheticians. It would never occur to most people, even most
> >>musicians and composers, to spend much time worrying about it. And if
> >>anyone does ask it, it usually doesn't really mean "What is music?"
> >>-- that is, what is its concrete definition, how does it differ from
> >>speech or noise -- but is shorthand for more general questions like
> >>"What does music mean? What is its role in life? What are the
> >>reasons it affects us?" Whereas the question "What is poetry?" is
> >>almost always a way of asking for the concrete definition -- "Exactly
> >>how is poetry different from things that aren't poetry?" "What are the
> >>criteria by which we call one thing poetry and something else not
> >>poetry?" -- which must precede those more general questions. In other
> >>words, "everyone knows" what music is, but nobody knows what poetry
> >>is.
> >>
> >>"What is cinema?" The question is famous, but only among a small
> >>coterie of theorists. The average movie goer would find it quite
> >>irrelevant, if not absurd, to try to define what a movie is.
> >>
> >>"What is art?" A question made much of in the art world, I suspect
> >>mostly because public attempts by artists to raise it are an effective
> >>way of getting media attention.
> >>
> >>"What is the significance that the question 'What is poetry?" is so
> >>often asked and never really answered?"
> >>--
> >>===================================
> >>
> >> Jon Corelis www.geocities.com/jgcorelis/
> >>
> >>===================================
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
> --
> We went down to the sea
> all the poets together
> and gave ourselves up to the waters
> in various positions of loss:
> Nathaniel Tarn
>
--
My Stuff: http://www.badstep.net/
"In peace, sons bury their fathers. In war, fathers bury their sons."
Roman Proverb
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