[Quiet Man Cometh]

So, yoink!

Originally Posted by Suzerain of Sheol

On the subject of poetic criticism, I find this a rather interesting read, though it isn't exactly in line with my thoughts on the matter.

I suppose I'm something of a poetic nihilist, in that I see poetry as a dead form of art, something engaged in for wholly self-indulgent purposes. There are, sadly, far, far more poets in the world then there are readers of poetry. I could go off on a tangent about how writing of any kind comes down to communication (and, more fundamentally, community), semantic structures providing a medium through which ideas can be exchanged, but, as I said, I feel that poetry in the last century has become entirely saturated and lost to all relevance. To make an example of what you said, it is, in many ways, about the poet's emotions, in that it is a pursuit mired largely in vanity, and at best, a quasi-artistic hobby. It doesn't, and hasn't in a long time, communicate much of anything beyond the poet's state of mind at the time of the writing. A curiosity.

That isn't to say there's no room for discussion, however. Honestly, the only sort of recognition a poet is going to get in our postmodern age is among his or her peers. In that sense, it remains a dialogue, albeit one of particularly colloquial parameters. You can represent poets as a subsection of the human system engaging in a form of discourse unique to themselves, and could derive sufficient semantic merit from that to call poetry a kind of art, but outside that circle of relevance, poetry simply falls away. And if you deny that very dialogue, you're left with only the poet in stasis, isolated in a room of mirrors. Ideas can't mature or evolve without communication.

*snitched from another trade to avoid the usurping of said thread with non-topic chatter. No worries, Sheol know about this. ;)*

This got me thinking about the nature of poetry, especially in contemporary times. I know that there has been comments made about the dwindling relevance of poetry today, or whether it can be said to have any relevance at all.

How many people here actually read poetry as well as write the stuff? I like to say I'm literary minded but I definately write more than I read when I take out the mandatory reading from school assignments and the like. I doubt I could name more than a couple poets who's work I read that were writing in the past 10 years. There don't seem to be a shortage or poetry writers, but how many people are inclined to read poetry beyond what they've written for themselves?

These are just open comments here, not focusing on any poet in particular.

On the communication end, that got me thinking about the poetic "conversations" that were engaged in back in the 19th century. Poetry evolved over time with changes in communication and topic. If there is an idea of what makes a poem now, what is it?

I think I need to streamline my brain a little here before talking much more. I feel like I have a ball of yarn and I'm not sure which end to pull at.

So relevance or communication, what are your thoughts on them?

[Suzerain of Sheol]

Woooo! English nerd discussion! Yeah!

Okay, first of all, I'll mention that there seem to be two "schools" of poetry, as it were, in our age, though there could of course be more that I'm overlooking. (This is probably, actually, a gross simplification). But, regardless, you have the collegiate poet, learned and studied, writing in a "scene", part of the literary machine that keeps poetry even remotely relevant as an art form. I would classify my professor and her fellow poets she invited to our classes under this heading. My problem with this group, like every other literary in-group, is that they're writing mostly for each other, almost speaking a different poetic language (or have evolved poetic language into something we lesser sentients can no longer apprehend) and it largely comes off (to me) seeming like artistic fiddling and self-indulgence, as though their poetry is just an exercise to engage the creative parts of their mind.

On the other hand, we have the, I suppose, more classical paradigm of poetry that I'm fairly certain all the poets around here fall into, the poetry of emotion and thematics (and, it must be said, still recognizably a "poem" in the classic sense, as opposed to the rather bizarre productions of the above group). The problem with this group is that, a.) it has been so thoroughly explored as an art form over the centuries, it's gotten to the point where advancement really is next to impossible, and b.) it can end up being even more self-indulgent than our erstwhile artistes, becoming an exercise in gazing inward, and expecting the world to care about our personal states of mind. This sort of poetry struggles for relevance, and can in many cases end up impossible to empathize with to any great degree. It often comes down mere words on a page, representing -- to the poet -- their mind-state at the time of writing, but of negligible value as a written work to be read.

This is, of course, only my opinion on the matter, and I invite cogent disagreement. :)

[Quiet Man Cometh]

I agree that that's an oversimplification, but the notion of poetic circles exist everywhere, even if it's just a group of friends that like to write in a given style, or the audience that frequents a particular cafe for poetry readings.

I wouldn't be surprised if the idea of a poetry circle is what keeps many magazines going. Magazines decided what topics they want to focus on what poetry they want to see. In many places, form poetry is out as something archaic and if one wants to read or publish form poetry they'll need to find another magazine or group of mags that likes the stuff. I'm the past there might have been arguments on the difference of value from one poet type to another, but nowadays I'm thinking it might roll more along the lines of poetic favouritism.

I'm not sure that poetry that focuses on the inward emotions of the author has ever been a collective group. I imagine it's something every author does at some point. With that style of poetry, the topic will always remain the same at it's core. It will be the presentation that defines it. I have no shortage of it, and I imagine that every other poet has at least one poem where the speaker is themself.

According to the interview with Steven Erikson, personal inserts into art are hard to avoid if not impossible, and I agree with that, but I figure its' the degree to which the author lets their personality/biography/philosophy etc. dictate the poem that determines which school that peom will end up in. Keep it minimum and you likely have a poem that has implications beyond the writer that an outside audience can relate too; too much and you have a diary entry that may be cathartic for the writer but has little relevance beyond a few, like minded readers.

Aside, if you aren't writing a poem for someome, why are you writing it? When you talk about the "collegiate school" writing for each other, are you referring specifically to the speficic people within that group, or do think there's some intent to share those poems with a greater audience of like minded people?

**this post has not been error-checked**

[Suzerain of Sheol]

@your third paragraph, yes, yes, that's exactly what I was trying to say. Leaving aside stuff like the Death of the Author, everything you write is a psychological footprint you leave behind. Even if you painstakingly make sure that nothing of yourself makes it into the piece, that still says something about you.

And I think in those collegiate situations, there's something of a formal community of "poets" (as in, people who really do consider poetry a central part of their career) and those people, in sharing their work with one another, end up defining what poetry is in the modern age based upon the way it has evolved among them. I suppose the reason I single this group out from any other is because it commands a certain authority, or tries to pass itself off that way.

I end up looking at some of these hyper-literate poems by the "masters", littered with references to any number of obscure sources (and that's another reason I think it fails; there's simply far too much STUFF anymore, unless you're referencing super-tired motifs like mythology, in which case you're doing nothing new or, really, creative), and I end up thinking that it's just an organization of someone's collective thoughts, perhaps on a subject; it's still a still-life of a mind-state, and I feel that by trying to pass it off as more, they end up making it unapproachable.

[littl3chocobo]

o.o so, i know i will sound ignorant saying this but i read what you wrote about the 'two schools' and i have a question, where does music fit in? music in it's contemporary form of the last hundred-fifty or so years /is/ poetry in it's form and telling only with instruments, i see almost no difference excepting that sometimes a word's pronunciation will be mutilated to fit though i have seen that in poetry as well

[Quiet Man Cometh]

I'd go so far as to say that Music has always been a part of poetry in the sense that you can link it to oral presentations of epic poems and stories long before any of the stuff we talk about here ever showed up on the horizon.

The "schools" we mention here are for the sake of discussion, but on the whole, poetry schools have been in existance probably as long as poetry itself as people have different ideas of what constitutes good or proper poetry, what is poetic in nature, and what is okay to write about. You can talk about things like the Cavalier Poets, which wrote more about courtly things and woman and such, Metaphysical poets of the 17th century who focused on extended metaphors and lofy topics. Religion and society were proper topics for poetry at one point. That shifted when the Sensibility and Romantic poets appeared to bring focus to the emotions and state of the individual person.

Not sure of music and poetry can be discussed together appart from the fact that music is poetry too, becuase the appeal of music can adn often comes from the sound of the intruments and the melody rather than the lyrics and word craft.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

I find music a very tricky question. For one thing, I am not a musician. :P

But, seriously, I can only appreciate music as a layman, and I feel that when it comes to the "poetry" of music, the sounds is even more a part of it than the lyrics. I tend to shy away from trying to analyze music the way I would a poem, since it would sort of be like trying to analyze a poem in a foreign language to me (perhaps one I had a rudimentary understanding of).

I do think music is a kind of poetry, though. I'd almost call it a three-dimensional form of poetry, or perhaps two branches of the evolutionary tree of "art".

Now, there's a debate to be had over whether lyrics in music count for as much as the words in a poem, since they're only part of the whole, and I'm honestly not sure how I come down on that one. I tend to look at music from a very lyrics-focused perspective, because of my background in literature and poetry, so to me, they do seem very significant, but there's no ignoring the fact that if you're just reading the lyrics to a song, you're not getting the entire experience, or at least not experiencing it as the artist intended.

A very interesting point, and a difficult distinction. If you wanted to complicate it even farther, you could throw poetry that is written around the idea of being read aloud into the mix. :P

[Quiet Man Cometh]

Poetry was nearly always written aloud, or at least literature was, for the simple fact that many people were illiterate. To encounter any form one literature many people had to be read too. Going to the book Eats, Shoots, And Leaves, the author (who's name I can never seem to remember) comments than punctuation was originally used in texts that were meant to be read aloud. Reading a story in one's head didn't start until literacy became more widespread.

I tend to find music much more direct than poetry. It might be because I've grown up reading poety and listening to music, to that I'm more inclined to examine a poem because I have the words infront of me while in a song they float by and I don't have the time to let my mind catch up with them before the rest of the moves by.

I find that the songs in which I most appreiate the lyrics are those that have minimal "interferance" from the instruments. Songs like "Bother" by Stone Sour, "Halleluja" by Leonard Cohen, use only minimal intruments besides the voice and that's where to me they lean more towards poetry.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

Well, I think that lends some credence to my three-dimensional poetry point. :P

Music really is (yes, it's possible :P) even more difficult to agree on or even cogently discuss than poetry. Case in point, I believe you and I, Quiet, get almost entirely different experiences out of listening to music, as I suspect is the case for many, many people, and it makes the discussion that much more complicated. All we can really do is share our opinions and contrast them.

[littl3chocobo]

i was asking because scarborough faire i have heard recited and sung which equate about to the same, i have also listened to a bit of music that, like the songs quiet mentioned, are minimal music but even songs with plenty of instrumental input like 'no milk today' ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Reqc38YW81w ) would be just as moving spoken as sung, granted there is repetition but it is a story told in a very concise way much like the poetry i pined over in school

[Quiet Man Cometh]

It's possible that part of the reason poetry isn't as popular any more as it used to be is because music has become much more relevant to us than the lyrics of a poem. I would general still prefer to listen to someone sing acapella than recite a poem, but there is something about hearing a poem without furnishings like melody besides what the poet has created with the natural flow of words.

Poems can be read or heard. It's seems poetry's niche in soceity has been usurped between music and the novel. Even I have to admit that it's more satisfying to me to read a book over a poem, or collection of poems. Poetry rarely has the amount of open, bare substance that a novel can have. From this view I guess, poetry has been situation in a seat next to philosphy, as something academic to discuss over the occasional drinks rather than talk about as a daily thing like the a band's new song or a particular author's new book.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

I really like your last point. Though, I'm pretty sure a good number of philosophers would care to disagree. :P

[littl3chocobo]

a number of philosophers would disagree that latin is dead :\

[Suzerain of Sheol]

As they're flipping burgers? :P

...says the English major.

[littl3chocobo]

ouch, you are a mean one sheol XD

[Quiet Man Cometh]

I have never flipped burgers!

And I would gladdly have watercooler talk with a philosohper but there are no watercoolers in my immediate vicinity. The misfortune is mine.