Poetry

[M^tster]

Which first one?The first one of the whole thread, or my first one?

[banes]

wha??

im going to take this opportunity to direct to you master one of these spamtastic smileys i never used

 

[M^tster]

Poetry is Poetry is Poetry is Poetry.

I like the first one because it is a one sided conversation that falls on deaf ears.  Both are letters, than poems that use imagery, diction and all that other stuff to convey their meanings.  They are straight-forward and to the point.

I don't think you have to "dress up" in order to "go out"

I was asking shadow which poem he was talking about. 

[banes]

Oh now I understand what he said, and I have to completely disagree with you Moving Shadow.  If you wanted to speak in abstracts, you should write essays.  Honestly what makes abstractions poetic in the slightest? Study the canon and you will see how vital imagery is.  If you take any professional writing courses in college, you will learn that, even in essays, it is important to be detailed enough in order to further enhance the readers understanding, while keeping him entertained, and helping him to retain the information.  I have read memory studies, and I know putting an image to an idea leaves a longer lasting impression.  And that is just essays that require imagery in terms of details of the evidence; in poetry it is so much more important to use imagery because poems are not essays.  Furthermore, abstractions hardly exist in good poems, and are generally replaced with an image to stand for an idea.  Writing words like love, sadness, justice, and confusion do not adequately convey their denotations.  These are just the words we attach to those specific feelings, but they do not adequately convey what it means.  Would it be better to write,

"When she asked for a divorce,
I could feel
My sadness cripple me,"

in order to convey sadness, or would a far more effective approach be to write,

"When she pulled off her diamond
Ring and threw it down on the marvel
Floor, i felt my face
Crack for a moment, like a fishbowl
Anxious to spill its contents."

In my opinion the first one is weak because I cannot envision sadness crippling you.  Sadness is not an object because it is intangible, unlike say a car crash which could very well cripple you, and which you could clearly see if you gave the right details.  The second one however does not contain any abstract words.  I never specifically name sadness as the emotion being spoken of.  It is not effective to tell you how youre supposed to feel; it is much more important to show it.  Details and concrete imagery are how you can show these things.  You must essentially detail an experience, in order to convey more deeply the heart of the matter. 

I recall this example many years ago in 7th grade when I was first introduced to poetry.  An eagle can be found in the encyclopedia as some factual, intellectual, and dry entry.  It does the eagle no justice.  It can only convey to you the intellectual aspect of an eagle: how big they grow, what color they are, the different families of eagles, their mating patterns, and a slough of other facts that may only give you an objective idea of what an eagle is.  However, it in no way conveys to you the experience that an eagle is.  You will never truly know what it is like to stand next to one of these magnificent creatures if your only experience with an eagle is from an encyclopedia.  However, if you read Lord Alfred Tennyson's poem, "The Eagle", I would argue that you get significantly closer to conveying that experience of an eagle, than you would from reading about and seeing a picture in an encyclopedia.  I do believe poetry is capable of capturing moments much more accutely than even a camera or a video would; it manages to capture the essence of it.  Though it is still in no way a substitute for an actual experience, the experience of poetry, and art in general, comes far closer to conveying experience over any other form of expression, and I can assert that it can get frightfully close to the reality of the matter.

You really have that idea of "dress up" in order to "go out" a little twisted around.  Adding concrete imagery (and I am not just talking about metaphors, just concrete details like his face cracking alone), is not about "dressing up" but merely about "existing" in a far more tangible realm.  With the metaphors, your argument holds more weight over whether it is "dressing up," and I do believe some poets have argued, but honestly, there is nothing about "dressing up" with a poem from say William Carlos Williams, an imagist who can accutely detail an image without having to rely on figures of speech.  I would argue even further that abstractions are even more "dressing up" than even figures of speech.  They are pompous words, such as nobility, confusion, jealousy, frustration, lust, or tragedy, which you may falsely assume add to your poem's "classyness" or "poetic" value, because the ideas they stand for relate to powerful emotions, but merely giving away the labels for powerful emotions is not good enough to share the feeling.  This is why you need to detail your experience because the key details of the images in your experience convey that feeling so much more accutely.  It gives others the sensation that they have been struck somehow, afflicted with your existence.  I recall a poet describing the emotion felt after reading a good poem as "I felt that shit!"

Anyway, I have enclosed the poem I mentioned above, "The Eagle" by Lord Alfred Tennyson, along with William Carlos Williams "The Red Wheelbarrow."


The Eagle

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.



The Red Wheelbarrow
     
so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

[Moving Shadow]

I don't have adequate time to fully counterpoint what you have said...


But i will say Yes I did graduate college with an english degree.  Yes I have been to those courses that teach professional writing, but sometimes you have to take a discourse from what you were taught. 

and Tennyson is a bore.   

[Art]

All poetry is abstract to me.

[banes]

I don't have adequate time to fully counterpoint what you have said...


But i will say Yes I did graduate college with an english degree.  Yes I have been to those courses that teach professional writing, but sometimes you have to take a discourse from what you were taught. 

and Tennyson is a bore.   

you need to make that counter point moving shadow, especially now that i know youre capable of writing very coherently, make some time for me please, i am always interested in learning more about writing, i do agree with moving away from convention in order to invent and create new forms and conventions, but i feel that getting away from imagery just isnt helpful, i just believe its much more efficient to use imagery, ive never seen an abstract that could make me feel something, in my opinion, using imagery in good poems is just as essential as the words themselves

[Moving Shadow]

I'm getting a bit off topic, but read some Harold Pinter.  British Playwright.

I will reply... my internet is down at home and no time at work   

[banes]

playwright? i assume hes written some poetry correct? cause my case against abstraction really is dependant on the genre of poetry

[M^tster]

IMO too much detail takes away from the point of the poem, not to say what you write is not good, but I like to be short to the point and a lil bit mysterious in my writing, not too much just a lil

[banes]

how does too much detail take away from the point? gimme an example when this occurs, and i dont see how The Red Wheelbarrow, or The Eagle werent short and to the point, maybe they werent that mysterious, but i still say there are far better ways to make your writing ambigious than using abstractions

[M^tster]

Wild Life

Every road sign passing by shined brightly from our head
Lights, marking the last bastions of civilization,
As we crossed into the depths of wilderness.

Crawling up around the contours of the mountain,
I knew something was not quite right.  My chauffer
Envisioned veering off the dusty road into some lovely pines,
Some distance down the side of the colossus.

Colossus I say, because as we rode further into that pagan
Land, I acknowledged that the mountain had a life of its
Own.  In the dust kicked up from the wheels of passenger
Vehicles, the boney spine protruded down the center of the road.

Anxiously, I told my driver that the mountain was not dead,
But she refused to hear it.  The desire to drive off into Elysian
Fields was strong, and god-forbid that driving on the mountain

[banes]

oh the art of the narrative, yes i have been reading a lot of short stories lately, which has influenced my reading to be more prose like, however there is no specific definition of poetry that claims that it must not be prose like at all, in fact there is even a genre called prose poetry, but let me show you some earlier works

asymptote
to face the void again will fill your eyes with dilated darkness that spreads the flame throughout the cave
though it must be known that one cannot become the zero unless you subtract its head
so go then to the nothing place and by chance its breeze may brush your cheek
seek then emptiness in your soul that exists as the mere dot of a pin hole
if you seek to fill your mind with objects under light you

[M^tster]

Hmm that was an interesting reply you had there.Very specific, which is how like it.Enigma is my friend, I don't fear seeking out the few.The masses is not what I chose.I chose to look for the select that would be close to my soul, not the masses who don't care.

[banes]

well i guess were jus going to have to agree to disagree