Credentials

[todski28]

I find 100 words too easy. Why?

In the far distant past, when I was at school, the English examinations included a few questions on precis. You were given an article of about 2,500 words and expected to reduce it to 100 words while retaining most of the sense.

We did at least one example a week and by the time of the examinations, I could do a precis in about five minutes.

Now, I can think of a story in my head and produce a precis of it in about 100 words in ten minutes. It would take a bit longer to ensure it was exactly 100 words.

But 50 words is much more difficult. It takes me several hours for each one.

Where did you go to school? That sounds like a brilliant way to help organise your thinking and condense complex material into digestible sound bites, to better present the core ideas in an essay. When I was in school I was on more drugs than most teachers had ever seen.

It would take me less than a couple days to smoke an ounce of weed and do an 8/ball of meth until I had a mental break down and ended up institutionalised for 6 months.

So to string together sentences, let alone condense my thinking into 100 words that are coherent can take a fair bit of time. I’ve never tried 50, I’ve written a few Ginsberg American sentences and they can be a bit of a challenge to get down and actually say anything of worth, or meaning.

 

[todski28]

I also think that any type of rule can be limiting. You referred to the use of traditional forms as rules, and I think that's one accurate way of looking at them. I think of painters when I think of rules and whether they form a necessary foundation. They can, obviously, but it depends a lot on what you want to do. There were wonderful painters whose art probably benefited tremendously from not having the rules and not having art educations. Van Gogh, Rousseau, Khalo, and Grandma Moses come to mind. We need the Van Goghs in poetry as well as in painting.

While what you propose in this statement seems to be a grand endorsement of freewheeling individuality, there also has to be effort to get to where you want to go, even if it’s outside the box of conventional thinking, most people don’t have the skin to handle the criticism that comes with that kind of expression, most don’t have the fortitude to continue beyond the initial rejections, also actual talent of that level is wildly rare. Subjectivity is a fickle creature and if you don’t tickle the tastes of a majority then whatever you produce will be in the same pile as everyone else brand of mediocrity.

I have no designs on trying to publish anything other than to free mostly peer reviewed and commented on places I.e lit and so I can experiment however the hell I want without fear of reprisal or rejection and since I know most of the regulars here, even if they have negative criticism it is not with malicious intent, basically it’s safe to scribble on the walls here.

As to the above three talent can and often is seperate from training, learning and understanding, cultivated talent that works hard is going to succeed, unfortunately there’s no real way to measure talent until someone practices what ever it is they put their mind to, and then they are judge by the merit of there work by those that engage in the same type of work.

Rules can be limiting but understanding them can help catapult you ability by forcing you to work within a constraint, especially in artistic endeavours, write how you want, when you want, but once you release it, it’s now the readers who will decide if your baby will sink or swim.

 

[todski28]

I agree with you.

To underscore the point further I would point to other art forms -- drawing, or music.

There's no obligation to draw in a lifelike style, and there are plenty of great drawers who don't draw this way. Picasso was famous for drawing people in a non-lifelike way. But he knew HOW to draw people in a lifelike way, and he'd obviously practiced at it, so he knew the human body and how to represent it. That knowledge informed his later work, even though that later work did not depict the body in a lifelike way.

Same with music. Knowledge of musical theory and scales helps one compose, even if the music one ultimately composes violates the norms of western music.

A solid understanding of poetic forms, and of meter, and rhythm, and different types of rhyme, can only enrich and help one's ability to write poetry, even if one's own poems don't hew to classical poetic conventions.

You mention Picasso, I would be inclined to say his ability to draw people in abstract and oddly defined way would have benefitted from his ability to draw something life like then augment that knowledge to its new purpose.

 

[oggbashan]

Where did you go to school? That sounds like a brilliant way to help organise your thinking and condense complex material into digestible sound bites, to better present the core ideas in an essay. When I was in school I was on more drugs than most teachers had ever seen.

It would take me less than a couple days to smoke an ounce of weed and do an 8/ball of meth until I had a mental break down and ended up institutionalised for 6 months.

So to string together sentences, let alone condense my thinking into 100 words that are coherent can take a fair bit of time. I’ve never tried 50, I’ve written a few Ginsberg American sentences and they can be a bit of a challenge to get down and actually say anything of worth, or meaning.

Schools?

London, Gibraltar. Suffolk boarding school, London grammar school and Australian high-flying High School...

The Australian High School had a compulsory subject for all students at university entrance level called 'English Expression'. That subject included precis, rhetoric and logic..

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

While what you propose in this statement seems to be a grand endorsement of freewheeling individuality, there also has to be effort to get to where you want to go, even if it’s outside the box of conventional thinking, most people don’t have the skin to handle the criticism that comes with that kind of expression, most don’t have the fortitude to continue beyond the initial rejections, also actual talent of that level is wildly rare. Subjectivity is a fickle creature and if you don’t tickle the tastes of a majority then whatever you produce will be in the same pile as everyone else brand of mediocrity.

I have no designs on trying to publish anything other than to free mostly peer reviewed and commented on places I.e lit and so I can experiment however the hell I want without fear of reprisal or rejection and since I know most of the regulars here, even if they have negative criticism it is not with malicious intent, basically it’s safe to scribble on the walls here.

As to the above three talent can and often is seperate from training, learning and understanding, cultivated talent that works hard is going to succeed, unfortunately there’s no real way to measure talent until someone practices what ever it is they put their mind to, and then they are judge by the merit of there work by those that engage in the same type of work.

Rules can be limiting but understanding them can help catapult you ability by forcing you to work within a constraint, especially in artistic endeavours, write how you want, when you want, but once you release it, it’s now the readers who will decide if your baby will sink or swim.

Hmmm... I think we may be talking about different points along the line. I'm not sure where you're located, but it is hardly possible to escape high school here without being exposed (some would say overexposed) to the rules. The basics, of course, nothing elaborate. But, we all did our pencil-tapping on the desk with iambic pentameter and had to draft sonnets after we read Shakespeare's (I find him uninspiring), and had assignments with figurative language. I think every 9th grade English book in America has a chapter that starts with "The fog comes on little cat feet." (Sandberg is a vast improvement over Shakespeare to my mind.) Everyone writes some haikus. The talented class clowns managed to approximate limericks with haikus.

I should say that with the caveat that it depends on where you live. Apparently, there are some districts that don't manage to teach people to read above a basic level. It's terrible.

Now, I don't assume that everyone who takes these classes remembers more than a smidgen of what they were taught (even if their bloodstream is unaugmented.) I was a good student, and I didn't even remember at least a quarter of the stuff in a recent thread that focused on meter. But, once exposed, people know those things are there if they want to make use of them. I don't think they need to be hammered about the ears to write in those specific ways

I still believe that it's important to present the forms as one way of doing it, not the way of doing it. I don't like to see the "rules" drummed into heads. I've seen creativity squashed, and I really don't like seeing that. I think that if I were setting the curriculum, I would start with free verse, work on figurative language, then add rhyme and meter, and finally overall structure. In other words, encourage the ideas and open people to seeing how they can play with the words, letting them take things in their own unique directions, and only then showing them, "hey, you can do it this way, and if you do, here's the effect you can get." I see one as prescriptive and the other as offering tools.

But, this discussion started with a statement that to truly be a poet, one must be able to write poetry in traditional form. That is quite a bit different than saying that traditional forms offer challenges or improve understanding. I am, and will always be, resistant to anything exclusionary. Despite my lack of credentials.

PS: To whomever is organizing the pitchforks and torches for the lynch mob to avenge Shakespeare, I'm sorry, but I am like a jilted lover where he's concerned.
He had me with MacBeth and Othello. The luster faded with A Midsummer Night's Dream and his humdrum miscellaneous sonnets. He lost me with Romeo and Juliet. I have never forgiven him for that god-awful plot. Even if he didn't originally contrive it, he slept with it, and now it's over between us.

 

[todski28]

Hmmm... I think we may be talking about different points along the line. I'm not sure where you're located, but it is hardly possible to escape high school here without being exposed (some would say overexposed) to the rules. The basics, of course, nothing elaborate. But, we all did our pencil-tapping on the desk with iambic pentameter and had to draft sonnets after we read Shakespeare's (I find him uninspiring), and had assignments with figurative language. I think every 9th grade English book in America has a chapter that starts with "The fog comes on little cat feet." (Sandberg is a vast improvement over Shakespeare to my mind.) Everyone writes some haikus. The talented class clowns managed to approximate limericks with haikus.

I should say that with the caveat that it depends on where you live. Apparently, there are some districts that don't manage to teach people to read above a basic level. It's terrible.

Now, I don't assume that everyone who takes these classes remembers more than a smidgen of what they were taught (even if their bloodstream is unaugmented.) I was a good student, and I didn't even remember at least a quarter of the stuff in a recent thread that focused on meter. But, once exposed, people know those things are there if they want to make use of them. I don't think they need to be hammered about the ears to write in those specific ways

I still believe that it's important to present the forms as one way of doing it, not the way of doing it. I don't like to see the "rules" drummed into heads. I've seen creativity squashed, and I really don't like seeing that. I think that if I were setting the curriculum, I would start with free verse, work on figurative language, then add rhyme and meter, and finally overall structure. In other words, encourage the ideas and open people to seeing how they can play with the words, letting them take things in their own unique directions, and only then showing them, "hey, you can do it this way, and if you do, here's the effect you can get." I see one as prescriptive and the other as offering tools.

But, this discussion started with a statement that to truly be a poet, one must be able to write poetry in traditional form. That is quite a bit different than saying that traditional forms offer challenges or improve understanding. I am, and will always be, resistant to anything exclusionary. Despite my lack of credentials.

PS: To whomever is organizing the pitchforks and torches for the lynch mob to avenge Shakespeare, I'm sorry, but I am like a jilted lover where he's concerned.
He had me with MacBeth and Othello. The luster faded with A Midsummer Night's Dream and his humdrum miscellaneous sonnets. He lost me with Romeo and Juliet. I have never forgiven him for that god-awful plot. Even if he didn't originally contrive it, he slept with it, and now it's over between us.

So from my personal standpoint is where I’m referencing this, I went to 17 different primary schools, and was not much for the school system by the time I hit high school at 13. I was drinking almost daily smoking pot and taking acid in classes, I don’t remember anything about metre unless it was a measurement and as to reading I did that for personal reasons not for school work, so I’m probably not the standard bearer of the wonders of Australian academia

good student was no where near my grades, wasted potential was my calling card I was excused a lot of schooling because at 13 I was 5ft11 and 220 lbs teachers didn’t know what to do, the law stated I had to be there and they didn’t want me there so they ticked my name off the roster and as long as I didn’t fuck with the class I was basically left to my own devices. those devices were not tuned into poetic metre and Shakespearean sonnets etc, I still haven’t read a Shakespeare piece through start to finish, not have I read too much of any of the famous/recognised poets, my favourite poets are pretty much contained in this website and another that I used to frequent.


[Qoute]I still believe that it's important to present the forms as one way of doing it, not the way of doing it. I don't like to see the "rules" drummed into heads. I've seen creativity squashed, and I really don't like seeing that. I think that if I were setting the curriculum, I would start with free verse, work on figurative language, then add rhyme and meter, and finally overall structure. In other words, encourage the ideas and open people to seeing how they can play with the words, letting them take things in their own unique directions, and only then showing them, "hey, you can do it this way, and if you do, here's the effect you can get." I see one as prescriptive and the other as offering tools.

But, this discussion started with a statement that to truly be a poet, one must be able to write poetry in traditional form. That is quite a bit different than saying that traditional forms offer challenges or improve understanding. I am, and will always be, resistant to anything exclusionary. Despite my lack of credentials. [\Quote]

I think using multiple forms as representations of ways of writing poetry would be a better alternative than using only one method, but how much time do they have for the teaching of poetry in depth, I’m assuming it’s a compulsory component as a guide and if you choose to follow the words then that’s up to you as an individual. As to obtaining credentials, I’m assuming credentials in the sense of this thread is tertiary level education English lit course etc, etc and since I have zero credentials, unless you count the ability to speak English and bad English as credentials because from that standpoint I’m credentialed up the Wazoo
—————————-

Starting with free verse is an interesting conceptualisation but for me it puts it in the realm of anything and everything is a poem it’s ”poetic relativity” Free verse itself still has a set of rules and guidelines that should be adhered to, to actually make something a poem.... and now we hit another snag in this discussion and it’s one I’ve seen bandied about here on more than one occasion, “what exactly is a poem?” Sorry

With clear hard rules of a poetic form, even if it’s a tortured set of words to fit a structure anyone can write it and it’ll still be a poem by defined parameters. Free verse is trickier in my opinion because you’ve no operating parameters aside from show don’t tell, or is even that too exclusionary?

if we were to build a house with out a foundation or a working knowledge of structure the failure rate would surely increase, from my stand point and I’m probably more wrong than right without the first process of structure how do you branch into unrestrained wordage? it’s why when I started this writing Schlick 7 years ago I was using rhyming couplets because it was identifiable as poetry because Seuss said so .

Does being resistant to exclusion mean that even the worst possible writing on the worst possible subject has to be included into the mix of poetry?

by dint of ranking a piece better than another are you not excluding those things with your preferences?

 

[todski28]

Schools?

London, Gibraltar. Suffolk boarding school, London grammar school and Australian high-flying High School...

The Australian High School had a compulsory subject for all students at university entrance level called 'English Expression'. That subject included precis, rhetoric and logic..

Ahh High School, sorry but I never made it more than a failure there, as to university hah didn’t even enter my thinking I was out of home at 16 and spent most of that so out of my mind on chemicals I went to a mental hospital as I mentioned in the previous post.

I hit 18 and started bouncing in nightclubs, I was picking grapes and doing vineyard work for cash before that, spent two years living with 4 other people in a two bedroom flat in welfare, so.... I wasn’t exactly kicking life goals

Though sometimes I like to fantasise about the “what if” my parents hadn’t been drug, alcohol and violence addicted where or who would I be now, and in the same breath how different would I be if I hadn’t had the happy fun childhood I did.

Australian High Flying High School interesting, I might have to look it up

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

So from my personal standpoint is where I’m referencing this, I went to 17 different primary schools, and was not much for the school system by the time I hit high school at 13. I was drinking almost daily smoking pot and taking acid in classes, I don’t remember anything about metre unless it was a measurement and as to reading I did that for personal reasons not for school work, so I’m probably not the standard bearer of the wonders of Australian academia

good student was no where near my grades, wasted potential was my calling card I was excused a lot of schooling because at 13 I was 5ft11 and 220 lbs teachers didn’t know what to do, the law stated I had to be there and they didn’t want me there so they ticked my name off the roster and as long as I didn’t fuck with the class I was basically left to my own devices. those devices were not tuned into poetic metre and Shakespearean sonnets etc, I still haven’t read a Shakespeare piece through start to finish, not have I read too much of any of the famous/recognised poets, my favourite poets are pretty much contained in this website and another that I used to frequent.


[Qoute]I still believe that it's important to present the forms as one way of doing it, not the way of doing it. I don't like to see the "rules" drummed into heads. I've seen creativity squashed, and I really don't like seeing that. I think that if I were setting the curriculum, I would start with free verse, work on figurative language, then add rhyme and meter, and finally overall structure. In other words, encourage the ideas and open people to seeing how they can play with the words, letting them take things in their own unique directions, and only then showing them, "hey, you can do it this way, and if you do, here's the effect you can get." I see one as prescriptive and the other as offering tools.

But, this discussion started with a statement that to truly be a poet, one must be able to write poetry in traditional form. That is quite a bit different than saying that traditional forms offer challenges or improve understanding. I am, and will always be, resistant to anything exclusionary. Despite my lack of credentials. [\Quote]

I think using multiple forms as representations of ways of writing poetry would be a better alternative than using only one method, but how much time do they have for the teaching of poetry in depth, I’m assuming it’s a compulsory component as a guide and if you choose to follow the words then that’s up to you as an individual. As to obtaining credentials, I’m assuming credentials in the sense of this thread is tertiary level education English lit course etc, etc and since I have zero credentials, unless you count the ability to speak English and bad English as credentials because from that standpoint I’m credentialed up the Wazoo
—————————-

Starting with free verse is an interesting conceptualisation but for me it puts it in the realm of anything and everything is a poem it’s ”poetic relativity” Free verse itself still has a set of rules and guidelines that should be adhered to, to actually make something a poem.... and now we hit another snag in this discussion and it’s one I’ve seen bandied about here on more than one occasion, “what exactly is a poem?” Sorry

With clear hard rules of a poetic form, even if it’s a tortured set of words to fit a structure anyone can write it and it’ll still be a poem by defined parameters. Free verse is trickier in my opinion because you’ve no operating parameters aside from show don’t tell, or is even that too exclusionary?

if we were to build a house with out a foundation or a working knowledge of structure the failure rate would surely increase, from my stand point and I’m probably more wrong than right without the first process of structure how do you branch into unrestrained wordage? it’s why when I started this writing Schlick 7 years ago I was using rhyming couplets because it was identifiable as poetry because Seuss said so .

Does being resistant to exclusion mean that even the worst possible writing on the worst possible subject has to be included into the mix of poetry?

by dint of ranking a piece better than another are you not excluding those things with your preferences?

There you go again dissing my boy, Suess.

I'll start with the practical: It's not up to you, me, the consensus of the thread, or anybody else to decide what poetry is or what can be called poetry. One could argue about what should or should not qualify, but it doesn't sound like a good idea to me, even if people do it all the time. First of all, what is the purpose of the argument? The people doing the arguing have no practical ability to act as gatekeepers anyway, so I assume the argument is theoretical. So what can be learned from it? I suppose the obvious answer is learning how different people see poetry. But if you really want to see how people see poetry, isn't it better to start with the question, "What does poetry mean to you?" Why start with what it is not? More importantly, why start with a question that makes it clear that some people's answers aren't acceptable?

When you start trying to decide who gets to be a poet or what gets to be poetry, you arrive at the problematic nature of this thread. Credentials. Who gets to say who has a right to decide? That's nonsense and puffery. A few days into a fresh conversation, and it has already returned to its roots. The same flower is likely to bloom from them again.

I don't believe that ranking is exclusionary. It doesn't say that some people don't belong on the list at all. It says that in the opinions of whomever is determining the rankings, some poems are more desirable than others. Being inclusive does not mean that everything is on par.

The house building analogy is useful up to a point, but there's a critical difference. The house has to function in a specific way. There aren't too many different ways a house can function and still be a house. That's not the case for poetry. There's also the fact that house building is a safety matter and poetry is expression. I think it's safe to allow freer rein for expressive endeavors. Nobody will be harmed by the loosing of unstructured poems. The errant little things can cavort, pile up, dangle, or do whatever people find annoying, and everything will still be just fine because nobody has to read them. If poetry reading becomes compulsory, I may have a different opinion.

As far as how much time they have to teach poetry, I can only answer that they have the amount of time to teach the subjects I listed. In my classes, it wasn't taught as a single unit, so I really couldn't estimate. Unless you devote the entire semester to recognizing the basic structures, it's impossible to cover all the forms and their components. Some things will necessarily go untaught. What is to be taught must be prioritized. That's why I advocate teaching in the order of expression, language use, then structure. If you turn people off with the first lesson on sonnets, you've lost the entire thing. If it were me, I'd work to gain the interest first, the tools second, and the formalities a distant third. Nobody's asking me to set curricula, so the stodgy old order is quite safe from me.

I find it odd that an art form like poetry keeps drawing conversations toward stricture. Is poetry an unruly beast to be tamed? Is it something to be reserved for the "worthy?" That's not how I see it.

Let the poetry creature run around loose. So what if it clunks around in the hall sometimes? Would it be the end of the world if it swung from the chandelier and landed in the punch bowl? What bad thing will happen if you let it climb the drapes? You can't control it, anyway. You may be able to keep it at a distance by being unfriendly to it, but it will live on. You'll just miss out on its antics.

 

[Piscator]

tod, there's paper cred and street cred - you have the latter

 

[29wordsforsnow]

... “what exactly is a poem?”...

Maybe we come closer to an answer if we use the sherlock'ian approach of exclusion to see what makes a non-poem...

by dint of ranking a piece better than another are you not excluding those things with your preferences?

Mmh, in the end it's always personal preferences that leads to the ratings, isn't it?

Turned voting off for my last scribbling to see if it still finds some people who would read it even if doesn't have any 'class'/'quality'-sticker. Personally, I find the feedback through comments for this one more interesting than any stars. Done in a short time, without the usual 'torment of words' it had some anarchic, rebellious aura which shouldn't come in the way of something more promising done with great effort by others.

 

[oggbashan]

...

Australian High Flying High School interesting, I might have to look it up

You won't find it. All I will say was that it was a state-run school (not private fee-paying), the entrance requirements were high - you had to have academic AND sporting ability and the attaintments were high.

For example, each year there were twenty-five state scholarships awarded to cover all costs of going to university. That is twenty-five for the whole state of 500+ high schools. In my day, my school never won fewer than five of them.

Sporting? The school produced many Olympic Gold medallists. In my time there were three in the coaching department.

 

[oggbashan]

I started this discussion - posts #246 and #248 - on my own view of my inadequacies as a poet.

But my view may be wrong. I know I don't know enough about the history of poetic forms and I regret that. But despite that, perhaps I can write poetry.

I mentioned above my study of the subject of English Expression. I enjoyed that. I did NOT enjoy the parallel subject of English Literature.

There was far too much analysis of structure, use of forms and how the author achieved various effects. We had to pull each studied work apart and in doing so, destroyed any enjoyment of the work.

Almost every work I studied in depth I cannot appreciate now. I see the trees, the branches and the leaves but not the wood. It is like pulling a complex piece of machinery apart until you have a heap of component parts but lacking the ability to restore it to a complete working whole.

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

...But despite that, perhaps I can write poetry.

Can and have!

...Almost every work I studied in depth I cannot appreciate now. I see the trees, the branches and the leaves but not the wood. It is like pulling a complex piece of machinery apart until you have a heap of component parts but lacking the ability to restore it to a complete working whole.

That. Exactly that. It doesn't mean it's not useful, but there's often a sacrifice. You can't really reassemble a rose once you've taken it apart. But I think the other sacrifice is the tendency to (1) draw similar trees because that's what one's brain thinks it's supposed to do, and (2) see the branches and leaves, but not the wood, in one's own writing. The sacrifice may be worth making, and there may be ways to minimize the downside of the sacrifice, but like most sacrifices, I think it's best left to each of us to decide.

If someone can grow beautiful roses without taking them apart to see the pieces, I think we should stick to admiring or even critiquing the roses, without trying to vet the grower's botanical bona fides. If we want to tear the roses apart to look at them for ourselves, that's one thing, but demanding that the rose grower do it to his own roses if he wants to be a rose grower is overstepping.

 

[butters]

i've read plenty of 'poetry' that wasn't

and plenty of 'prose' that was poetic

some people use the 'you can't say this isn't poetry' to excuse piss-poor writing. just because you (anyone) can slap some words down on a page, complete with line breaks, doth not a poem make.

 

[butters]

and don't even get me started (again) on the laziness of people who shit 3 lines, in a 5-7-5 layout, and call it a haiku. it can be a short poem, a faux-ku, a very good poem! but that's not a haiku. a haiku requires certain elements. if you don't want to use those, fine! just don't label your work haiku when it's not. urgh /rantonpethate

 

[todski28]

i've read plenty of 'poetry' that wasn't

and plenty of 'prose' that was poetic

some people use the 'you can't say this isn't poetry' to excuse piss-poor writing. just because you (anyone) can slap some words down on a page, complete with line breaks, doth not a poem make.

This I agree with 100%

And yet I still fall into the realm of relativity since art is a subjective medium, I’ve been skirting around the hard lines stance, even though to my bones I believe it to be true, I can’t articulate it without being stuck in the grey area of what poetry is/isn’t without defining it by my own parameters. At least with formative writing and rules you can break down the piece as poetry by the mechanics, yet even within that there are pieces that adhere to the form but are so mind numbingly bad that I’d rather read a dictionary.

So do we then use a looser parameter that defines poetry by the caliber of the writing?

What defines the caliber of writing?

And round and round we go, for every concrete answer I can muster, someone can simply will it away with a “but”

Do we conform to the consensus of what the masses believe to be good?

In so doing we may rob ourselves of art we love but no one else gets, and at the same time a lot of art should simply be killed with fire, or is that “just like my opinion man”

 

[todski28]

Maybe we come closer to an answer if we use the sherlock'ian approach of exclusion to see what makes a non-poem...


Mmh, in the end it's always personal preferences that leads to the ratings, isn't it?

Turned voting off for my last scribbling to see if it still finds some people who would read it even if doesn't have any 'class'/'quality'-sticker. Personally, I find the feedback through comments for this one more interesting than any stars. Done in a short time, without the usual 'torment of words' it had some anarchic, rebellious aura which shouldn't come in the way of something more promising done with great effort by others.

I’ve always found comments more helpful that an arbitrary ranking system, good commenters are like good alcohol to be appreciated and savoured because they don’t come around very often unless you’re incredibly lucky and for the most part those that are sincere with no malicious intent have you and your poem at heart, even if you disagree I believe you should still appreciate the time someone puts in to read your words and find reason to comment

 

[butters]

This I agree with 100%

And yet I still fall into the realm of relativity since art is a subjective medium, I’ve been skirting around the hard lines stance, even though to my bones I believe it to be true, I can’t articulate it without being stuck in the grey area of what poetry is/isn’t without defining it by my own parameters. At least with formative writing and rules you can break down the piece as poetry by the mechanics, yet even within that there are pieces that adhere to the form but are so mind numbingly bad that I’d rather read a dictionary.

So do we then use a looser parameter that defines poetry by the caliber of the writing?

What defines the caliber of writing?

And round and round we go, for every concrete answer I can muster, someone can simply will it away with a “but”

Do we conform to the consensus of what the masses believe to be good?

In so doing we may rob ourselves of art we love but no one else gets, and at the same time a lot of art should simply be killed with fire, or is that “just like my opinion man”

poetry, painting, music, dance... all highly subjective art-forms. of course. and what touches one person may leave another cold (see nyx's comments re shakespeare).

but like a bland stack of bricks in an art display isn't 'art', you KNOW there's stuff out there called poetry that simply is not.

As the story goes here, Mr. Andre decided in the mid1960's that the time had come to create low sculpture. He bought 120 bricks, arranged them in a rectangular pile, two bricks high, 6 across and 10 lengthwise, and waited in vain for customers. He then sent the bricks back to the brickyard.

In 1972, Tate officials saw a photograph of the bricks and offered to buy them. Mr. Andre found some new bricks (the old brickyard having gone out of business), and sent them off to London in a crate, complete with directions for assembly.

Once assembled, they were displayed. They were noncontroversial bricks—tranquil, solid, innocent. But no more.

https://www.nytimes.com/1976/02/20/archives/tate-gallery-buys-pile-of-bricks-or-is-it-art.html

consensus of the masses? not on your nelly.

art, by its very inception, pushes boundaries, invents, develops, branches out... inspires! but if i sit here tapping my pen in a monotone one-beat-per-second for 10 seconds? that's not music, certainly not drumming.

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

And this, gentlemen, is why you have an empty forum. I've lost my appetite.

 

[todski28]

And this, gentlemen, is why you have an empty forum. I've lost my appetite.

I guess I should’ve stuck with re-writing Seuss poems

And at the same time it’s all rehashed ground so I understand the log jamb of ideas when it comes down to it, the nature of inclusivity vs a sense of “ivory tower elitism” that comes along with those that write poetry or what ever we deem as poetry can stick in the throat because of the perception that we’re trying to be gatekeepers

But if a poem is not at a certain standard of readability, I.e can you keep your reader through to the end of the piece, then it’s purpose which I would best describe as

Conveying information on an emotional level designed to stir a response that’s universal within the human condition.

cannot be fully realised.

Is there a way of being able to teach that ability without the reliance on cliche, which by it’s very nature was once a poetic novelty but became culturally accepted because it transcended it’s era other human barriers.

If writing is poor no matter it’s formation, no matter its techniques and it doesn’t hit the right layers for the reader then it’s a failure, what ever is lost or gained by that is negligible in the grand scheme of life that we live, but to read something that grips your emotions and wrestles them from your chest or mind unbidden is that not something worth striving for?

I am stuck on this discussion because theee are valuable points in both directions.

 

[todski28]

And this, gentlemen, is why you have an empty forum. I've lost my appetite.

By the way, even if you think this has possibly been a failed endeavour or a waste of your time, I’ve enjoyed your thoughts and it has made me rethink some of my assumptions on the issue, and that for what it’s worth is why these types of discussions are worth my time.

 

[Lyricalli]

And this, gentlemen, is why you have an empty forum. I've lost my appetite.

This saddens me, and I don't think it's quite accurate. This thread has been nothing more than an exchange of ideas, and in discussing those, there have been differing ideas, but nothing to suggest that your, or anyone else's, idea of poetry is unwelcome in this space.

For my part, I see the merits in your point of view, but I also understand those that have a more defined idea of what poetry is. There is room for all of that here.

Unless the point of this conversation was to change minds about what or what isn't correct thinking when it comes to poetry, I'm not sure why there is a loss of appetite here.

I have no formal poetry education, not even close to what you've discussed from your own background, and I don't have nearly the language of poetry that those who have inhabited this forum for a long time do. I've come into poetry fairly closely to what you might desire. My only tools were a decent vocabulary, feeling that some words just sound good together, and having spent some time reading the poetry in these forums and discussing some of it with a writer who appreciated that I was showing an interest.

Hell, I never planned to start writing poetry in the first place... I just got several nudges in the tush by an insistent foot. But, I was welcomed here. No one asked what my credentials were or if I knew a meter from a lamb. Which is good, because I still don't know. May never know.

So, there was, and now has been again, a discussion on credentials. Cool. The reality is that people like me can wander into PF&D, dip their toes in the water and not be eaten by piranhas. For all the reasons this may not be an active forum, having demands of poetic credentials being made of people is not one of them. That has been true for at least the last six years since I've come and gone from this place.

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

This saddens me, and I don't think it's quite accurate. This thread has been nothing more than an exchange of ideas, and in discussing those, there have been differing ideas, but nothing to suggest that your, or anyone else's, idea of poetry is unwelcome in this space.

For my part, I see the merits in your point of view, but I also understand those that have a more defined idea of what poetry is. There is room for all of that here.

Unless the point of this conversation was to change minds about what or what isn't correct thinking when it comes to poetry, I'm not sure why there is a loss of appetite here.

I have no formal poetry education, not even close to what you've discussed from your own background, and I don't have nearly the language of poetry that those who have inhabited this forum for a long time do. I've come into poetry fairly closely to what you might desire. My only tools were a decent vocabulary, feeling that some words just sound good together, and having spent some time reading the poetry in these forums and discussing some of it with a writer who appreciated that I was showing an interest.

Hell, I never planned to start writing poetry in the first place... I just got several nudges in the tush by an insistent foot. But, I was welcomed here. No one asked what my credentials were or if I knew a meter from a lamb. Which is good, because I still don't know. May never know.

So, there was, and now has been again, a discussion on credentials. Cool. The reality is that people like me can wander into PF&D, dip their toes in the water and not be eaten by piranhas. For all the reasons this may not be an active forum, having demands of poetic credentials being made of people is not one of them. That has been true for at least the last six years since I've come and gone from this place.

I saw a different name than usual on the last posted column of the main forum page, so I decided to check back. Nice to meet you, Lyracalli.

I feel I should clarify. My loss of appetite does not stem from a failure to change minds, although I did hope some minds might become a little more open.

You're confident that demands for poetic credentials are not a reason this forum isn't active. You don't believe there's anything to suggest that somebody else's idea of poetry is unwelcome here. I understand that reflects your experiences, but I think you should consider that they don't reflect everyone's experience. I assume people who do post here must have asked themselves why the place is dead. All the others forums are quite active, with a regular influx of new participants to replace those who disappear. So, what is it about this one?

Here is how I experienced it:

First, I spent a couple of months reading the posts here. Todski and Piscator post work fairly regularly, and I enjoy it. Posts to people's own threads, with little to no commentary or interaction, have been almost the entirety of posts during the time I've been watching the forum. The main exceptions are the Plague Journal, which isn't really something a new person can follow or contribute to, and the music thread.

When a thread I hadn't seen before became active, I thought there might be an opportunity for discussion. I looked at it and it was extraordinarily unpleasant. It was people arguing over who has the right to comment on poetry. It's not only arrogant, but it's just mean. I didn't read the entire thing, but I did read several pages in the beginning and several pages at the end. It was not exclusively people suggesting that they had the right to say what other people should or should not have opinions about, but that was the vast majority of it. If you look at that through the eyes of someone new here, does that seem welcoming?

I hoped there was more to the story, because I'd really like to see this forum work for discussion and sharing. I posted, "Yikes!" It was a flag that there was something that wasn't terribly positive, and to invite explanation. The explanation was nostalgia for the days when people said those things. Then another person also felt nostalgic about it. Because, again, I'd really like to see this forum work, I posted something suggesting that the thread was not welcoming. Todski very nicely suggested that the forum dynamic was different these days. A second person who doesn't post here on a regular basis also suggested that the thread needed clarification and that it would be nice if attitudes now were different than attitudes then. So, you had two posters you do not usually have in this forum, saying there is something unwelcoming. It doesn't make sense to discount that.

I accepted Todski's explanation at face value. Then the discussion returned to its roots. This is where I'll have to disagree with your framing of the issues. The topic from the original thread that was last discussed was not what poetry is, but about who has a right to comment on it. The new comments on the thread almost instantly turned to what a person must know in order to be considered a poet. There's a difference between discussing whether standards apply and presuming to judge who can or can't practice (or should or shouldn't believe/say they practice) a particular art. The first is problematic. The second is abominable, in my opinion. Also, pointless.

We tried to take the conversation in a positive direction. I thought we were getting somewhere. There was an exchange of ideas, expression of different opinions without telling anyone else their opinion was wrong. The forum had at that point three people who do not usually participate here discussing poetry in the forum. How often does that happen? Then came comments about people's piss-poor writing being excused by a desire not to be limiting or excluding, and about people who lazily shit three lines in 5-7-5 format and call it a haiku. Those sentiments were met with approval and expounded upon.

I don't want to be somewhere people think they have a right to decide who gets to have an opinion or who gets to be a poet, and I don't want to be somewhere people post abstractly nasty thoughts about generic poets who don't make the cut in their opinion. I don't see how that sort of thing leads to growth, sharing or development, but perhaps more importantly on such an inactive forum, I don't see how anyone can be expected to take a look in here, see that the only active thread is about excluding people and making ugly remarks, and want to remain. Remember that very few people are going to leave a note to tell you why they chose not to participate in the forum.

I'm glad you had a good experience here. I think you should hold open the possibility that people landing here today are not having the same experience. There are a lot of other poetry forums out there, and they're generally positive, constructive places. There are some very talented people here, and I think this forum could be something much better. I thought that, anyway. I think what I've come to realize is that even those people here would like the forum to be more active, want it to be more active in a particular way, and I think it's possible those two goals are mutually exclusive. I don't know that it's possible to attract people to the forum when the subject of the forum is exclusion.

This isn't my house. I'm not here to burn it down. I can see that it's quite comfortable to the people who've shared it for a while. I can see there's no desire to change what it currently is. That's okay. It's collectively your house. New people may not want to move in, but they may not really be wanted, either.

It would be nice if one day this becomes the place you describe from your experience. If that happens, I'll probably be back, but more importantly, so will other people. People are still writing poetry and enjoying poetry. That's not what's changed.

 

[butters]

This forum is open to ALL posters, for the production and discussion of poetry.

The diversity of background experience when it comes to producing writing makes for a broad and beautiful spectrum of offerings... similarly, the diversity of experience (days to decades) in the study of poetic offerings means feedback and opinions will vary, often wildly; that is NOT to say someone with no formal training or background in literature cannot offer entirely valid feedback. ALL feedback is valuable, even if one doesn't agree with it. It offers the opportunity to see how a work's been received through eyes other than our own.

The reason most poetry sites fall quiet is a lack of feedback. Not many enjoy posting into a void. This forum's activity waxes and wanes; with many sick, or simply seeking new arenas to explore, feedback is lacking here. It's a sad but true fact. I spend not nearly enough time here, feeling kind of burned out and uninspired. When I feel that way, I don't believe my feedback will offer anyone's work any justice. I used to spend a whole lot of time reading and offering considered thoughts as feedback, but the number of poets with time or inclination to do that has fallen. As I said, it comes and goes.

Too many poets at too many sites will post a poem and expect a load of feedback, yet rarely do they offer any themselves. When you have paid, or very active mods, it keeps a forum running... when you don't, and members don't take up the slack, the forum wilts.

There are a gazillion other poetry sites, some better than others, who'll treat everybody with kid gloves rather than simply offer reasoned opinions upon the work in consideration. There are those places that will never suggest improvements or a different approach, never encourage one to broaden their experience by reading others and leaving thoughtful commentary. Those places are generally pretty busy. I'd sooner post here (when I'm productive) and receive feedback from people whose work I appreciate, and from whom I can learn, than post at those other places. We all come at this from different angles, so one of those sites might suit your path better.

It's a shame you take exception to my personal opinion on the haiku form; you are not alone. No other form seems to engender such response when it's parameters are explained. How many times do you see people argue about the 'rules' of a shakespearean sonnet? How often do you see people throw down the right number of lines for one, but ignore the meter & rhyme-scheme yet debate hotly that is IS a shakespearean sonnet and who is anyone to tell them otherwise? BY all means, lay down a 5-7-5 poem... good or bad (and, yes, that's obviously subjective to a degree)... but ignore all the other elements required of the form and still call it a traditional japanese haiku, I'll be on your case, like it or not. Just call it what it is, not what it isn't. Is that so very hard?

 

[oggbashan]

I agree with Butters that if you want to call something a haiku or a sonnet you should follow the rules that cover those forms.

But if you want to write something LIKE a Sonnet or Haiku? Why not? Just don't call it something it isn't.

You can use the traditional forms as a starting point to write in your own way. Why not? Inspiration can come from anywhere.