Keston---
The terms "prose-driven" or "musicality" are derived from a strict and
traditional definition of poetry as a measured and musical form of literary
structure. All else is prose.
You mention---
(The social relevance of 'enduring' as a
quality of verse is not a fixed relevance, how could it be, there've been
massive mutations over the past few centuries.)
(What endures now may not
in twenty years. Orders of endurance proliferate.)
This is an important question. (I'm of the opinion there the orders of
endurance do not vary so much.)
What endures is of utmost importance and worth to civilization. Therefore,
we save it, not allowing it fall into oblivion.
We all know of the poem that affixed to a historical event. Evocative of a
time---a poem that exemplifies a nation's character during crisis. Or the
poem defined by classical elements of form and musical beauty.
The poem so richly rendered it stands out from all the rest of its kind.
Ambitious. Summary of a generation or mood of a generation. Some suppressed
notion or insight told, perhaps better than anyone else of an era.
If poets neglect this question they risk obscurity. Total oblivion. It is
the challenge of the poet to endure. How does a poet make his/her work
survive?
By fresh language, insight alone, affixing the poem's meaning to eternal
truths. A keen sense of mortality---what may increase one's relevance to
literary history.
Can a poem survive on wit alone. The poem lives best, however, on embodying
the time in which it was written. The conscience of a generation. Enduring
the weight of the future by embodying beauty, eternal truths, vital societal
values. Moral imperatives. Thus, its contribution.
Ernest Slyman
HomePage
www.geocities.com/soho/7514
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"All around the hours run swift
their foolish errands."
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