Many thanks for responses on questions, and to Peter for his essay which seems
more to prompt a question for this chat page, actually. And well and good.
More questions for Gare du Nord still welcome.
Why poetry in a hollow age? cites Pierre. Because the age is hollow, of
course. The real test for poetry is to keep going at such times, even if the
Narnia forests disappear (welcome Sarah), and scientism grips the average
mind. Caesar Augustus Arts Consilius is our present patronising emperor:
Virgil, Ovid need not apply. But there may be confusion between science-
politics talk and poetry using terms and themes from such language.
What poetry isn't appropriate for is to conduct a rationally constructed
argument of political or scientific kind: prose is better, as Peter says. But
this applies to any rationally constructed or assembled material whatever, not
just to science or politics -- even a prosodic discussion conducted in that
way is a prose topic. It is possible, if you want to incorporate prosey
thought-ways into poetry to go for mixed modes, where the text may slip in and
out of poetry or prose (and this has often been my own favoured solution to
complicated topics, following Dante actually, but many others of the famous
too including the average Shakespeare play where it is the language of the
under-classes that is judged "unpoetic" for reasons slinkily analogous to
Peter's more rigorous purities). Politics, economics, and science are
dominating our world: poetry must deal with that right now or have a very
narrow vision. Blake knew this yonks ago.
To talk of fairly traditional poetry and not of other modern mixed modes, the
only real criterion is whether the meaning, emotional significance and sound
of the language form a (quasi)-unity which is created "deliberately", that is,
"mysteriously". These elements of language always do form a (quasi-unity),
even in normal conversation, but poetry puts the unity on display in patterns
and melodies. The patterns can be repeated, as if experience itself could be
repeated in its original occasion, in its quiddity, over and over (art as
eternal). The diction and meaning are, in a sense, just elements of this
alchemy, whose deeper motivations flood up from the subterranean provided the
creating voice trusts to the flow of the process and of the emotional
tonality. Any vocabulary, any meanings may take part in this, as long as the
process and flow are deeply enough motivated for the passions to be involved.
But if there's no distance from the passions -- if they are not sufficiently
objectified to have become like the artist's paints on the pallet -- then the
result will be crude. Similarly, if there's no distance from the rationally
arrived at meanings (for those must be stirred iridescently into the paints
too), the result will be equally crude. The problem with most politico-
philosophico poetry is that reason and its procedures are allowed to dominate
the process because the weight of information in the material has not been
sufficiently internalised: the information isn't a real thing born in the
poet's mind but is borrowed. Or, if the issue is a current cause celebre,
certain passions dominate in a stereotyped way. Those have likewise been
borrowed from the social realm and are inauthentic. But I don't believe these
one-sided dominations are inescapable.
All this is only to say that writing about weighty subjects is more difficult
than to write about loved hillsides under rainy weather that seems tinctured
by personal history. I see no reason to rule out any subject matter and feel
that the past is full of examples of unpromising material wrought into fine
poetry. No subject matter barred, surely. I feel I shall still be arguing
this on my deathbed. "Any last words, Doug?" "Yes (gargle, croak). All my
gold is in the... in the... in the pol-- ... in the poetr --- aargh!"
Silence for one minute while everyone and the passing dog think of my many
merits. "Hey, does anyone know where Doug kept his pol or his poetr?"
I could give Bill the address of a Serbo-Croatian poet over here if he
backchannels -- she writes in English. (I should have been seeing her tonight
at a Kathy Acker fest but am too busy to make it.)
Doug
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