Poetry is whatever it can be.
Hal
On Aug 25, 2007, at 7:38 PM, Peter Cudmore wrote:
> 1. Poetry is a way of remembering things.
> 2. Poetry is what it always was.
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics
>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
>> Behalf Of Jon Corelis
>> Sent: 25 August 2007 18:11
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Poetry? What's that?
>>
>> "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/
>>
>> ===================================
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