Poetry is Dead
- Thread starter William Haskins
- Start date
I'm glad you brought this back to life, Haskins. It were before my time too.
I don't know what to think on this. On the one hand, my intuition says you're right. Poetry seems like something that most people roll their eyes over. So if there isn't enough cultural momentum for people to be given context for poems, and a way to understand them outside painful english classes, would that lead to the prevalent feeling that it's "just pretention"? It's so easy to think that about any art we don't get the context for. Add that to the notion that anything goes, so that most of the poetry out there is just pretention, and ... ick.
It also makes me question anything I write, to the point where I'm scared to share it here. Am I just doing anything-goes pretention?
But it also seems to me that every generation thinks the next one is a victim of sloth and sloppy thinking. And I'm not sure, from what little history I understand, that true love of poetry (as opposed to claiming adoration of popular poets) has ever been more than a subculture. Are we the generation that's right? Every group seems to think that. So I maintain hope that my intuitions are wrong.
And I just.. don't know.
I can totally get behind this (though I read that as Haskins-Robbins at first...
) but I guess the question is, are we also claiming that colored chalk is ice cream now?
I don't know what to think on this. On the one hand, my intuition says you're right. Poetry seems like something that most people roll their eyes over. So if there isn't enough cultural momentum for people to be given context for poems, and a way to understand them outside painful english classes, would that lead to the prevalent feeling that it's "just pretention"? It's so easy to think that about any art we don't get the context for. Add that to the notion that anything goes, so that most of the poetry out there is just pretention, and ... ick.
It also makes me question anything I write, to the point where I'm scared to share it here. Am I just doing anything-goes pretention?
But it also seems to me that every generation thinks the next one is a victim of sloth and sloppy thinking. And I'm not sure, from what little history I understand, that true love of poetry (as opposed to claiming adoration of popular poets) has ever been more than a subculture. Are we the generation that's right? Every group seems to think that. So I maintain hope that my intuitions are wrong.
And I just.. don't know.
I can totally get behind this (though I read that as Haskins-Robbins at first...
) but I guess the question is, are we also claiming that colored chalk is ice cream now?
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JBI
Banned
Actually, there are two excellent (and even more than two) books on the subject. The first one, a canonical work of literature, Turgenev's Fathers and Sons details this in an examination of the trends of thoughts and reactionary psychology, philosophy, and art surrounding his contemporary time in tsarist Russia. The second, Harold Bloom's Anxiety of Influence actually creates a form of literary criticism out of the concept that the poet must find fault within his predessesor as a means of escaping being unauthentic, and therefore will destroy the perceived view of the "master" in favor of the new. This of course all seems rooted in Nietzschean philosophy, with the concept of the Ubermench, and the setting the bar by means of an Ubermench to create a new train of thought. Indeed, Marcel Proust in his famous novel In Search of Lost Time argued that all poetic movements eventually get blended into a larger movement by time period, rather than reactionary thought, since they all are being drawn chronologically. The publication of such volumes as the Norton Anthology of Postmodern Poetry seem to echo this thought, with the mixing of poets as different as Jayne Cortez and Alan Ginsberg.
JBI
Banned
It's inevitable. If one is saying the same thing as the master, then they are inferior, since the master has said it first. If however, they destroy, or detract from what has been done before, they are more authentic, since they are offering something new that hasn't been done before.
The whole modernist poetry movement seems to be fueled by such notions. The ground work outlined by critics like Pound seems to be a direct retaliation to the Victorian poets, specifically Tennyson, and his American contemporary Longfellow, in addition to the Romantic poets, who went under turbulent attacks during the first half of the 20th century by poet-critics as renowned and well known as T. S. Eliot.
There also seems to me to be a catch. All poets, except the very early poets, and those stemming from the oral tradition, seem to be reacting, and yet idolizing something else. Pound was attacking poets left right and center, yet he, and many others, heavilly drew on antiquitas sources for inspiration. His range of allusion in his work seems to clear all poetry up until, and excluding Milton, in addition to strange western sources, especially Li Po, the famous Chinese poet, who he even learned to read in the original. The reverence to the poets of old, who "had it right before these fools meddled with it" seems to be an inherited trait amongst poetic disciplines.
Was Virgil's great epic not a direct retaliation against the influence of Homer, who he loved, yet had to overcome, as a means of securing the Roman tradition on par, or even higher, than the Greek tradition.
Even writers as excellent as Shakespeare seem dependent on these traits, which can be seen with his interior war with the influence of Marlowe, and the reverence of Chaucer.
It seems actually that all booms in literature seem to ride the wakes of large socio-political changes, and begin with attempts at a Renaissance, a new start, with the fallacious hope of this time having it right.
The whole modernist poetry movement seems to be fueled by such notions. The ground work outlined by critics like Pound seems to be a direct retaliation to the Victorian poets, specifically Tennyson, and his American contemporary Longfellow, in addition to the Romantic poets, who went under turbulent attacks during the first half of the 20th century by poet-critics as renowned and well known as T. S. Eliot.
There also seems to me to be a catch. All poets, except the very early poets, and those stemming from the oral tradition, seem to be reacting, and yet idolizing something else. Pound was attacking poets left right and center, yet he, and many others, heavilly drew on antiquitas sources for inspiration. His range of allusion in his work seems to clear all poetry up until, and excluding Milton, in addition to strange western sources, especially Li Po, the famous Chinese poet, who he even learned to read in the original. The reverence to the poets of old, who "had it right before these fools meddled with it" seems to be an inherited trait amongst poetic disciplines.
Was Virgil's great epic not a direct retaliation against the influence of Homer, who he loved, yet had to overcome, as a means of securing the Roman tradition on par, or even higher, than the Greek tradition.
Even writers as excellent as Shakespeare seem dependent on these traits, which can be seen with his interior war with the influence of Marlowe, and the reverence of Chaucer.
It seems actually that all booms in literature seem to ride the wakes of large socio-political changes, and begin with attempts at a Renaissance, a new start, with the fallacious hope of this time having it right.
JBI
Banned
My Favorite is this Johannes Bobrowski poem-" Windmill "
Light,
foaming light,
over the plain,steep,
mountain of radiance, monstrous
roaring,the storms fly
breathing lightning,the terrible wall
rises in the sky.
I came over the dunes
from the sea
to the treeless riverland,
shadowless,dreamless,I walked
with the reapers,the mill stood
stiff and old. Now with grey
sails it grips the air.
Silent it lifts itself above the land.
It flies off
with the herons,hugh
on the white sky. The gleaming eye
of winter watches wildly
in the distance.
Ice-bird heart,
build your nest
of fishbone
and fin in the hollow,
in the whispering blood.
Stay with the children of the plain,
daughters and sons,
stay with the small shadows
of songs and dances,
hold a November grass
against the snow.
Light,
foaming light,
over the plain,steep,
mountain of radiance, monstrous
roaring,the storms fly
breathing lightning,the terrible wall
rises in the sky.
I came over the dunes
from the sea
to the treeless riverland,
shadowless,dreamless,I walked
with the reapers,the mill stood
stiff and old. Now with grey
sails it grips the air.
Silent it lifts itself above the land.
It flies off
with the herons,hugh
on the white sky. The gleaming eye
of winter watches wildly
in the distance.
Ice-bird heart,
build your nest
of fishbone
and fin in the hollow,
in the whispering blood.
Stay with the children of the plain,
daughters and sons,
stay with the small shadows
of songs and dances,
hold a November grass
against the snow.
Steppe -- it's lovely, but I'm not making the connection to the rest of the thread. Is there a link to poetry being in trouble or the poet being anxious about influence, or something else I'm missing? Help me out here!
Poetry may be having a hard time in some countries right now, but the poem will never die!
As you all know, the poem and poetry are not synonymous. The poem was there long before the poet and poetry ever showed up.
If a genie poped up and said, no more poems, would the poet still survive ? Yes! He/she would simply find another medium to apply the art of poetry to.
The poet is still very much alive and so is the art of poetry.The poem itself has been with us since the first man or woman looked at the moon at said "Ugh" and no genie will take it away! We have a right to it, and to try our hand at the poem.
Poetry is another matter.
But poetry might have difficulty with it's medium, from time to time.JMO.
As you all know, the poem and poetry are not synonymous. The poem was there long before the poet and poetry ever showed up.
If a genie poped up and said, no more poems, would the poet still survive ? Yes! He/she would simply find another medium to apply the art of poetry to.
The poet is still very much alive and so is the art of poetry.The poem itself has been with us since the first man or woman looked at the moon at said "Ugh" and no genie will take it away! We have a right to it, and to try our hand at the poem.
Poetry is another matter.
But poetry might have difficulty with it's medium, from time to time.JMO.
Great poem, but it's sorta rude to post the whole thing when it's covered by copyright.
Well I am a little forum and internet illiterate so I'll take a lesson from this and won't do it again.
JBI
Banned
JBI
Banned
Also, why "stuff"? what have I said is false.
Edit, also I would like to point out that there is an incomplete epic poem, which I am sure you are familiar with, Hyperion by Keats, that seems to illustrate this sort of conflict between the titan Hyperion, and the Olympian Apollo who succeeds him.
Second edit, also, this site which has an excerpt from Bloom's book could be of help to understanding the formation of these ideas: http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bloom/excerpts/anxiety.html#anticrit
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To be blunt it's the sort of sweeping generalization I'd expect from a high school intro to lit class. It's naive to the point of being inaccurate since it relies on broad generalizations without a context -- and some of those generalizations are inaccurate.
It's a standard literary theme, it's a topos in fact.
The problem with this, aside from extreme naivete, is that poets do draw on what's gone before -- and for the first couple of thousand years, that was was a poet was supposed to do; there's a reason that "original" was primarily used as a literary slur for hundreds of years.
This sounds very much like something in a half-witted intro to lit class -- one written by someone didn't actually read the poets themselves. Pound was reacting less to the Victorians, whom he didn't actually read, and far more to the Romantics -- from whom he cribbed, shamelessly. It's a lot of general assertions made without a context -- and they're sort of well, either inaccurte or obvious.
This is less about "all poets," than it is about Pound, who, while an excellent poet was bat-shit crazy. The reference to "All poets, except the very early poets, and those stemming from the oral tradition, seem to be reacting, and yet idolizing something else" is just ...
Oral poets are more accurately called oral formulaic poets because they rely on verbal formulas, down to repeated catch phrases and constantly re-cycled lines. Poets have always, and still do, stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before.
Dude, don't use all the prepositions up at once; save some for the rest of us.
Err . . . you do know that the Renaissance poets didn't actually know that they were participating in a renaissance? And, despite the emphasis on "rebirth" in survey classes, while the turn to classical models was crucial, what made that return possible was the printing press -- which made original language and translated texts widely available and affordable -- and the emphasis on writing poetry and prose in vernacular languages.
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JBI
Banned
I'm not sure where you are disagreeing with me. If anything it seems to agree with me, but say that I am generalizing. Of course I am generalizing, how could I not, and yet include everything that I desire to say within the limits of this thread. It is not as if a) everyone on this thread has read the same things, and b) everyone on this thread has the time to read a 10,000 page post detailing influence and originality in the history of literature, let alone the fact that I am simply unable to offer such a post. A little bit of generalization is of course in order.
Which renaissance are you talking about, English or Italian? It would make it easier to answer if you specify. As for Italian, which is the easiest to answer, the notion that they didn't know that they were participating in a movement is highly irrelevant to the fact that they were. Of course the printing press was an essential instrument, but the artistic outburst was occurring regardless of it. It must be taken into account that literature was just one form of artistic output. The visible downpour of unique artworks in both the visual and musical fields seems to imply (to me at least) that something was going on. I was under the impression that Italics were more important than the press for the renaissance, but I guess we learn something every day.
Which renaissance are you talking about, English or Italian? It would make it easier to answer if you specify. As for Italian, which is the easiest to answer, the notion that they didn't know that they were participating in a movement is highly irrelevant to the fact that they were. Of course the printing press was an essential instrument, but the artistic outburst was occurring regardless of it. It must be taken into account that literature was just one form of artistic output. The visible downpour of unique artworks in both the visual and musical fields seems to imply (to me at least) that something was going on. I was under the impression that Italics were more important than the press for the renaissance, but I guess we learn something every day.
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It doesn't make a whit of difference. It's true for both, though the English are typically a century or two behind.
Look; Boccaccio, Dante and Petrarch were shocking, shocking, when they began to write in Italian rather than scholastic Latin.
Chaucer wrote first in French, then in English.
Spenser made it a point to write in English -- even returning to a bad re-invention of the Southern/London dialect of Middle English -- as a way of saying "We are English, and these words are ours," just as Boccaccio, Dante and Petrarch, had done before him.
MacAllister
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BWAHahahaha!!!
As a lit crit person, I gotta say, that explains EVERYTHING.
You've got to read real crit, JBI, if you plan to run with the big dogs. Harold Bloom really isn't on the cutting edge of theory, and hasn't been, for years.
Secondly, you're clearly badly misunderstanding what you've read.
This is going to be a lot better starting place.
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like all fields, a bit of comraderie between fellow poets might help to get poetry alive and well again. Seasoned poets should help out those just starting off for instance and offer them encouragement and instruction. It is great to see this happening on AW, where those versed in a particular genre regularly reach out to novices and help them along their course.