I'm impressed by and grateful to Frederick and Chris
for their elegant and informed posts on lyric and
narrative. Everything they say can also be applied to
_Beowulf_, which, as a medievalist, is the epic I know
best. Here is a work of poetry that strives to be a
story, one of the preservation of history and
record-keeping, hence the plethora of names of people
and places. (The "singer of tales" is no mean title
for Albert Lord's study of the oral tradition.) 

_Beowulf_ is, in fact, an amalgamation of three
stories performed by singer/poets: Beowulf and
Grendal, Beowulf and Grendel's mother, and Beowulf and
the dragon--any one of which could do duty as a
relatively short poem, while all 3 stories together
speak of a grand occasion. The names recorded in
_Beowulf_ are crucial to the singer/historian, who
keeps those names alive, which is why Seamus Heany's
translation (in which he changes the names for the
sake of ungergrad readers) is such a travesty.

Well, speaking of soap boxes, I'll get off mine now.

Cheers,
Candice

I think the lyric-narrative polarization in recent
times owes much to Robert Frost, who separated them in
his own practice rather than using lyric



--- Chris Jones <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Frederick, many thanks for the comments. You have
> said in a far clearer
> and fluent way what goes to the essential core of a
> poetics I argue for
> and support and have spent a good part of my life
> trying to think. (The
> cost of this is I throw out 80 to 90 percent of what
> I write as
> uninteresting and not worth keeping. I am not that
> prolific.) 
> 
> It is interesting that in terms of prose novels,
> historically, a poetics
> of the limited lyric is also pushed and usually
> known as realist novels
> as opposed to modernist novels. But more so, even in
> recent poetics this
> limited lyricism is still pushed and more often in
> the name of a
> Heideggerean poetics which in the second coming is
> given the name of
> Derrida and Deconstruction. This is why I am so
> opposed to such a
> poetics and consider it to be a hermeneutics of
> colonialism or to be
> even more blunt and use Lenin's term, an imperialist
> hermeneutics. Or
> put another way, the Heideggerean song of the Earth
> is an imperial first
> person lyric. A song too often repeated in critical
> journals as
> so-called critical discourse in Latin derived terms
> and as if the term
> critical is an embarrassed silence on the journal's
> masthead.
> Deconstruction becomes an excuse to avoid real
> critique in this slippery
> way. (There is perhaps a real Derrida, but who reads
> him?)
> 
> Perhaps this is also why I find Dorothy Porter's
> verse novels not only
> interesting but important and I would say very
> important in terms of
> recent Australian poetics. (I will always remember
> Dorothy saying to the
> Postmodernists critics; I am a Romantic. Think about
> the poet's critical
> twist in terms of POV, here, and feel free to
> laugh.)
> 
> Anyways, I will get off me soapbox and press the
> send button. 
> 
> best wishes
> 
> Chris Jones.
> 
> 
> 
> On Sat, 2007-01-13 at 10:46 -0500, Frederick Pollack
> wrote:
> 
> > >
> > Chris goes directly to an issue I consider crucial
> for my poetry and for 
> > poetry generally.  I've read very little
> narratology, so I'll speak only in 
> > my own terms.  For a poet, writing narrative is
> psychologically and 
> > existentially different from writing lyric - i.e.,
> it feels different, and 
> > involves a different stance towards experience.  A
> critic, theorist, or 
> > reader, looking at a work from the outside, will
> see more continuity.  To 
> > ask which impulse (towards narrative or lyric) is
> primary within poets is 
> > different from asking which need is greater for
> readers.  And to ask either 
> > question in a historical vacuum creates
> chicken-or-egg aporias. 
> > Historically, and therefore (I think) in essence,
> both the poetic impulse 
> > and the poetic need are for storytelling.  The
> traditional primacy of the 
> > epic results not merely from the imposed wishes of
> ancient, medieval, or 
> > Renaissance princes but from a basic intuition:
> poetry should tell the tale 
> > of the tribe, explain the universe, and advance
> values.  The kind of tales, 
> > cosmologies, and values desired by the men who
> paid for epics may have 
> > amounted to propaganda; in the hands of good poets
> they became criticism. 
> > (I'm thinking primarily of Virgil here, but even
> the Nibelungenlied and the 
> > Song of Roland "criticize" the bloody worlds they
> seem to celebrate.)
> > 
> > For over two centuries now, poetry has meant lyric
> poetry.  The ancient and 
> > Renaissance hierarchy of genres was not inverted
> but discarded.  Yet every 
> > lyric poet, writing "about" his or her own grief ,
> pique, or ecstasy, is 
> > writing in the context of a larger story, being
> recited by society as a 
> > whole.  The tribe is always telling its own,
> unexamined tale, and imposing 
> > it.  Today the theme of that tale is that
> individual and immediately 
> > interpersonal experience is primary; that it
> alone, in fact, is real. 
> > However much mainstream poets may despise Margaret
> Thatcher's "There is no 
> > such thing as society, there are only men, women,
> and families," they accept 
> > it in their poetic practice.  Which is why I find
> it increasingly hard to 
> > read literary journals.  One more dead father, one
> more walk along the 
> > beach, yet another dreadful divorce ... for me,
> mainstream (or workshop, or 
> > magazine-verse) poets blur into one bourgeois
> figure, miserable but 
> > comfortable.  They asume two things: 1) that
> however predictable experience 
> > may be, sensibility is unique; 2) that if
> sensibility is adequately captured 
> > in a style, it alone can make average experiences
> seem unique, important, 
> > and "universal."  When they succeed, their poems
> suggest some timeless, 
> > human truth.  But timelessness is an illusion, and
> humanity consists of 
> > classes and ideologies in continual conflict.  The
> synchronic, solipsistic 
> > mainstream lyric cannot encompass this fact.  All
> contemporary "political" 
> > poems fail, because poets as poets are in flight
> from politics, i.e., from 
> > history.
> > 
> > More later, perhaps, but must run. 
> > 
> 



 
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