Poetry, prose, metre, stuff, to keep the other thread clean

[bogusagain]

Paul Cézanne? He attended art school for about six years then studied drawing for years and continued to study art while attending law school. QUOTE]

Have you ever looked at his life's work? You can see the how he developed a style that masked his deficiencies. Had it not been for the impressionists breaking with the academic tradition, no one would have ever heard of Cezanne.

The fact you seem to champion tradition and then claim Cezanne was an academic painter is ironic. Cezanne was one of he fathers of modernism, the biggest schism in art where creativity and intuition were put before tradition and academic skill.

The bar is calling me but I'll be back to puncture your reply some more.

BTW I have worked with artists who have attended art school for more than six years and still can't draw a line.

 

[bogusagain]

Bob Dylan's lyrics came from his study of 19th Century newspapers on microfiche from the NY public library. He pulled lyrics from yellow journalism, sensationalist stories, straight up ripped off 'lost' songs that were never recorded, stuff that even Alan Lomax never came across in his professional study.

You are saying that Dylan was a modernist. I have no argument with that. Probably the reason why he is such a great lyricist.

I'm not talking linearity, I'm talking studying a breadth of poetic technique before you go around presenting your own work as something worthy of critique. People appear, ask for critique, get defensive when they're told they need to relax the cliche, be a little more creative...and it's because they have no concept of poetry. How can you free your mind of pre-conceptions about poetry if you have no concept of poetry beyond reading a handful of poems in school or a few poems online?

What is technique but learnt orthodoxy. Earlier in the thread you spoke about poetric truth, surely technique is sophistry, not truth. One of the reasons for breaking tradion in the visual arts was because of the dead hand of technique.

The pre-conceptions of most of the people who post their poetry online is just plain-faced ignorance.

That is a silly assertion.

 

[twelveoone]

How does Kaddish or Howl happen without Ginsberg dissecting WC Williams, without WC Williams studying Leaves of Grass?

There is a whole lineage then that doesn't not come from the traditional English of either metre or form.
And let's not forget Robinson Jeffers. Now, except for WCW, these have had roots in the" tradition", however Marianne Moore also may not have.


Back to Milton
except from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton's_Prosody_(book)
Bridges shows that:

there are no lines with fewer than ten syllables in Paradise Lost
with a suitable definition of elision, there are no mid-line extra-metrical syllables
the stresses may fall at any point in the line,
although most lines have the standard five stresses, there are examples of lines with only three and four stresses.

Robert Seymour Bridges, OM (23 October 1844 – 21 April 1930) was a British poet, and poet laureate from 1913 to 1930.

This was my point, since the adoption of the metre system from the Romans, there have been problems, these problems have been debated for hundreds of years, and always there have been difficulties with certain poets, i.e. Donne.

Now to impose this on some newb. that is not from England strikes me as absurd,
as the language pattern is quit different, and to hold this knowledge as something sacrosanct and unchallengeable even worse, as it was challenged from day 1, in England.

I assume that every better poet here has the similar attitude in that to write it, you must read it, for a least a feel for it.

Now where I differ is I do not defer to those that drop things into slots, that capability has been programmed into computers already and there are certainly more computer poems out there than poets, and lord we have a shitload of them.

There is a gross deficiency in the number people that actually think.

All poetic tools work as either psychological impressment (patterns) or mental disruptions (breaking the pattern) the susceptibility varies somewhat from person to person and in the context in which it presents itself.

da-DUM-da-DUM repeated has very limited appeal to me, and Swinburne was a windbag. Now Frost, who was very good, who also said that writing poetry without metre was like playing tennis without a net (pattern), was talking out of his ass, because he included "loose iambs"(breaking the pattern) without bothering to explain them.

I oversimple somewhat.

 

[twelveoone]

I'm not talking linearity, I'm talking studying a breadth of poetic technique before you go around presenting your own work as something worthy of critique. People appear, ask for critique, get defensive when they're told they need to relax the cliche, be a little more creative...and it's because they have no concept of poetry. How can you free your mind of pre-conceptions about poetry if you have no concept of poetry beyond reading a handful of poems in school or a few poems online?

The pre-conceptions of most of the people who post their poetry online is just plain-faced ignorance. If someone is asking for criticism and looking to write better poetry there is a blueprint out there. Learn the forms by reading form poetry, write within the confines of the forms in imitation, learn to master a couple of sound techniques, read widely to see how other poets have used metaphor, try and create original imagery and metaphor, step outside the form and check out the modernists, surrealists, try some of their techniques...it's a long study and practice and probably not worth it if you believe Basho emerged from the cave creating poetry without being a scholar of his predecessors.

The snobbery comes from folks who show up not just to show other people their poems, but actually interested in becoming a better poet and looking to engage but then saying, "No, I don't have to read poetry to become a better poet, you're an idiot stuck in the 19th century. In the 21st century we just write whatever we want and eventually it'll be good."

Actually I quite agree, except about the forms part, it is a good idea to know why certain forms where developed, and the 19th century was a different audience than the 21st, and that may some people's pre-conceptions about poetry (what year is this?) that needs work.
I swear there is a technical paper out there ( I had it once) that most people recognise poetry as poetry only if it has end rhyme.
Now Basho who said fuck you to the staid haiku, as did most rebels (Keats, Eliot, Pound, etc.), knew which direction to point the finger (yes they did know). Turco points the other way. I make an exception for Blake, he just kind of pointed the finger.
Now the cliche, as I said most people don't think, the cliche is the least thoughtful thing you can possibly do, it has an audience because the audience doesn't think also. Breaking the pattern excites the audience, subvert it, invert it, pervert it but change the cliche. Make the dark as night "stark as night", "dark as mother's night", anything. Anytime you see a phrase you've seen before, think, does the next person really want to see "my love is like a red, red rose"? Get's old, like your mother's red red pantyhose, you really don't want to think about that now. Cliches are your mother's pantyhose. Gah. Mother's Day is coming up, go out and buy Mumsie some pantyhose, red, write her a poem full of cliches, see if it will be read.
And then write a story and submit it, sure as shit someone will love it, but a poem, at least take some of the cliches out, and now that I said it, someone will do it. Happened with Shakespeare, Betty and Veronica.

 

[Epmd607]

Syllable vs. stress incongruity is a major problem for an American reading British. If we want to study the forms and major poets we have to adopt a foreign dialect, which really sucks, because it'll slip into our practice.

If you choose end-rhyme it's inevitable that some sort of meter(iamb) is observed surrounding those lines. It's the meat and potatoes leftover from the arcanery of the 140-160 syllable sonnet. Rhyme is to poetry as the I-IV-V chord progression is to Western music. You don't end a verse on IV, and you don't neglect your metrical footwork to arrive at your rhyme.

How to set up and utilize end full/partial rhyme in free verse ---> neglect meter and rhyme for the first two lines of a four line stanza, finish the last two lines with the 5,6 or 7,8 of ottava rima.

American poetry is modern poetry. Whitman, Ezra Pound, Carl Sandburg, ee Cummings, WCW, Ginsberg are still everything new, different and exciting about poetry. You have Dylan Thomas beginning his writing career well within the forms dreaming of Yeats and you have long dead Walt Whitman the consummate outlier. I can't imagine that Pound, Sandburg, Cummings didn't write their first poems in form after serious study of Byron, Browning, Blake. I would have to find their collections and look at their first poems, I guess.

I could imagine someone only studying Robert Frost and Yeats and writing nice little poems in 1950. I can't imagine someone only studying Ezra Pound and ee Cummings and coming up with something of interest or entertainment to anyone in the past or future. I've read the entire Ginsberg collection a few times over, imagine how horrid it would be to only read Ginsberg when Ginsberg was channeling Blake.

 

[twelveoone]

Syllable vs. stress incongruity is a major problem for an American reading British. If we want to study the forms and major poets we have to adopt a foreign dialect, which really sucks, because it'll slip into our practice.

If you choose end-rhyme it's inevitable that some sort of meter(iamb) is observed surrounding those lines. It's the meat and potatoes leftover from the arcanery of the 140-160 syllable sonnet. Rhyme is to poetry as the I-IV-V chord progression is to Western music. You don't end a verse on IV, and you don't neglect your metrical footwork to arrive at your rhyme.

How to set up and utilize end full/partial rhyme in free verse ---> neglect meter and rhyme for the first two lines of a four line stanza, finish the last two lines with the 5,6 or 7,8 of ottava rima.

American poetry is modern poetry. Whitman, Ezra Pound, Carl Sandburg, ee Cummings, WCW, Ginsberg are still everything new, different and exciting about poetry. You have Dylan Thomas beginning his writing career well within the forms dreaming of Yeats and you have long dead Walt Whitman the consummate outlier. I can't imagine that Pound, Sandburg, Cummings didn't write their first poems in form after serious study of Byron, Browning, Blake. I would have to find their collections and look at their first poems, I guess.

I could imagine someone only studying Robert Frost and Yeats and writing nice little poems in 1950. I can't imagine someone only studying Ezra Pound and ee Cummings and coming up with something of interest or entertainment to anyone in the past or future. I've read the entire Ginsberg collection a few times over, imagine how horrid it would be to only read Ginsberg when Ginsberg was channeling Blake.

Pound was a consummate student and cumming wrote sonnets, they knew what they were selectively dismantling. Walt was rather terrible at form.
Now I've read both Frost and Yeats and greatly respect their talent, but both of them bore the crap out of me.
Pound and cummings I find highly entertaining. But here is something to think about, I would venture a guess that the next generation of poets will not nor care to have this background.

 

[pelegrino]

da-DUM-da-DUM repeated has very limited appeal to me, and Swinburne was a windbag. Now Frost, who was very good, who also said that writing poetry without metre was like playing tennis without a net (pattern), was talking out of his ass, because he included "loose iambs"(breaking the pattern) without bothering to explain them.

I oversimple somewhat.

da DUM, da DUM,
that's how I feel,
give me some room,
and I can kill,
da DUM, da DUM,
does not appeal?
such rhythmic loom,
couldn't be more real!

(fading away)
...da DUM, da DUM... till day of doom...

Rhyme is to poetry as the I-IV-V chord progression is to Western music. You don't end a verse on IV, and you don't neglect your metrical footwork to arrive at your rhyme.

I would call that a IV-V-I. I mean, what rhyme is to poetry. You don’t end your rhyming verse on a V either which would denote an imperfect cadence. Why not go for perfect and conclude normally on chord I ?
(All this is meant as symbolic as you put it, and in no way I mean that by setting rhymes to music you could not use any cadence you feel like using, )

 

[twelveoone]

da DUM, da DUM,
that's how I feel,
give me some room,
and I can kill,
da DUM, da DUM,
does not appeal?
such rhythmic loom,
couldn't be more real!

(fading away)
...da DUM, da DUM... till day of doom...




)

dum dum
is a hollow point
outlawed by the geneva convention

all too often suspended

 

[Epmd607]

...


I would call that a IV-V-I. I mean, what rhyme is to poetry. You don’t end your rhyming verse on a V either which would denote an imperfect cadence. Why not go for perfect and conclude normally on chord I ?
(All this is meant as symbolic as you put it, and in no way I mean that by setting rhymes to music you could not use any cadence you feel like using, )

Yeah, man. I-IV-V ends/begins on I, but you usually write it as I-IV-V because three chord progression only utilizes three chords.

 

[Epmd607]

Pound was a consummate student and cumming wrote sonnets, they knew what they were selectively dismantling. Walt was rather terrible at form.
Now I've read both Frost and Yeats and greatly respect their talent, but both of them bore the crap out of me.
Pound and cummings I find highly entertaining. But here is something to think about, I would venture a guess that the next generation of poets will not nor care to have this background.

What do you think the next generation of poets post-prosaic popularity resemble?

Is there a next generation even inside the university?

Does poetry begin with sacred meter and end in profane prose?

Some of my favorite hobbies have been called dead arts and dying pursuits: poetry, philosophy, mythology, boxing. If I were into jazz, calligraphy and wood printing I'd be well-rounded in conversation no one wants to participate in(outside of niche environments on the internet).

 

[twelveoone]

What do you think the next generation of poets post-prosaic popularity resemble?

Is there a next generation even inside the university?

Does poetry begin with sacred meter and end in profane prose?

Some of my favorite hobbies have been called dead arts and dying pursuits: poetry, philosophy, mythology, boxing. If I were into jazz, calligraphy and wood printing I'd be well-rounded in conversation no one wants to participate in(outside of niche environments on the internet).

the good ones - movie techniques, psychological manipulation of images - you'll always have crap artists

next generation - probably most from the university, but not from the MFA programs - you'll always have crap artists

what you think of metre will be no more as a relied upon tool, probably something more akin to Generative metrics, but that won't even be adhered to.

as far as hobbies go, fucking poetry costs time, money, grief, but it is a hobby and a lot more engaging than most. and in spite all that, you do meet a more interesting class of asshole on the internet, as one goal of the poet is to avoid the cliche.

Boxing causes brain damage, almost as much as news.

 

[butters]

the good ones - movie techniques, psychological manipulation of images - you'll always have crap artists

next generation - probably most from the university, but not from the MFA programs - you'll always have crap artists

what you think of metre will be no more as a relied upon tool, probably something more akin to Generative metrics, but that won't even be adhered to.

as far as hobbies go, fucking poetry costs time, money, grief, but it is a hobby and a lot more engaging than most. and in spite all that, you do meet a more interesting class of asshole on the internet, as one goal of the poet is to avoid the cliche.

Boxing causes brain damage, almost as much as news.

's't'truth

or

strewth!

 

[butters]

poetry
is found everywhere
in a field of poppies
in a ditch
a parking lot
a shadow
a smile
a child's laughter
the whisper of the wave that
hurries back through the sand
reluctant to be parted from its parent...
and in bricks and mortar
stone blocks
and in quicksilver minds
stuttering hearts

 

[Tsotha]

This thread

is depressing​

and almost as empty

as this post​

 

[bogusagain]

This thread

is depressing​

and almost as empty

as this post​

Yep. It's the reason why poetry diappears up its own semi-colon. The idea that someone knows what poetry is and someone doesn't. The reality is, the readers decide, not the writers.

 

[Epmd607]

poetry
is found everywhere
in a field of poppies
in a ditch
a parking lot
a shadow
a smile
a child's laughter
the whisper of the wave that
hurries back through the sand
reluctant to be parted from its parent...
and in bricks and mortar
stone blocks
and in quicksilver minds
stuttering hearts

Poetry as inquiry into mysteries of life faces the same problem as mythology/organized religion. Most cultures tossed spiritualism and wholly embraced materialism. Popular movies, shows, books pretty much reflect the need for (gritty/shitty)realism. Religion is in a race to see which church can reflect the realist experience the best to appeal to the commoner. Who needs ritual, it's the 21st century? We need Reverend RapDog and Chastity balls. Fantasy and science fiction are popular, but they completely reject level 2 allegory and we have every new book reflecting 'inevitable' dystopian narrative because Evangelicals exist or because neo-cons or communalists once existed.

So prose has the advantage of not having to follow ritual, the ceremony of rhythm and rhyme. There are no sacred forms that in and of themselves reflect something special about a few words strung together. There's no reason to read, reflect, meditate with the aid of meter and repetition.

Maybe it's healthy that ritual and reflection and any sense of wonder about the world is fleeting. We clue kids into mysterious things early on, small stories, but they only buy Santa Claus into the first few years of primary school. Then it's more or less time to embrace what's real/material and therefore valuable vs. everything else that is slightly fantastic. The problem is the preparation isn't very good, there are no more road signs to adulthood. So why wouldn't you ask why poetry no longer serves most adults, or has anything to offer most people you know?

 

[Epmd607]

Yep. It's the reason why poetry diappears up its own semi-colon. The idea that someone knows what poetry is and someone doesn't. The reality is, the readers decide, not the writers.

Would someone who has never studied circuitry tell an electrical engineer that he doesn't know the organization of circuits when he's spent decades building circuitry? It's just so heinous that poets bad mouth their own learning and experience so readily.

My sister doesn't know poetry, if she were reading Rumi or the lyrics to a Zombies song she wouldn't be able to tell the difference. I don't get to decide what goes into the content of laws, I'm not a lawmaker. I can read a law and have an opinion on it, but it doesn't alter anything, it doesn't make it a good or bad law. The readers decide what goes in Bogusagain's poetry? Does that really make any sense?

I do know what poetry is; and I know when I'm reading Saul Bellow and when I'm reading Wallace Stevens there are two very different forms of art taking place. It's just like that long dead punk ethos of anything I play is punk because I am whatever punk is. All the punks are dead, all the poets will die too then.

 

[bogusagain]

So why wouldn't you ask why poetry no longer serves most adults, or has anything to offer most people you know?

Because poets don't write poetry that is relevant to people's experiences?

I can see where you are heading, the fault is not the poets but everyone else. The fault IS the poets! It is the poets who write poetry that potential readers find irrelevant and ignore.

If poets stopped arguing about what is and what is not poetry and spent more time trying to write poetry that is relelvant in the contemprary world, maybe they would find an audience. All too often poets are all too happy to live in their ivory towers, happy in the idea that they are part of a small exclusive sect that holds the secret knowledge. They don't!

I read not too long ago that more texts books about poetry criticism are sold than actual books of poetry. That is a clue where poetry is going wrong.

 

[bogusagain]

Would someone who has never studied circuitry tell an electrical engineer that he doesn't know the organization of circuits when he's spent decades building circuitry?

Poetry is not a technical skill, it is an art form.

Being able to play a musical instrument doesn't necessarily make one a musical artist. You need the passion and the feeling, without that, you are just a technician.

All the punks are dead, all the poets will die too then.

For most people, there are no poets and that is because poets kill poetry, not punks.

 

[pelegrino]

Poetry as inquiry into mysteries of life faces the same problem as mythology/organized religion. Most cultures tossed spiritualism and wholly embraced materialism.

I take it, you mean "materialism" in a western/all American/post-modern, whatever sense.
Not dialectical-historical materialism in a Marxist sense. We use this philosophical term so fucking casually now a days. Do we really know what we talk about one wonders.
It is not such a bad thing that spiritualism is tossed away, is it?
It had become too political (serving only right wing ideologies) and it deserved it.

 

[bogusagain]

It is not such a bad thing that spiritualism is tossed away, is it?
It had become too political (serving only right wing ideologies) and it deserved it.

Well said. The idea of the spiritual is a way of keeping the population doped up and subservient to (irnically) the soulless establishment.

BTW it would be wonderful if people who talk about "the spiritual" could actually define what "the spiritual" is. It is such a woolly term with no real meaning.

 

[twelveoone]

Well said. The idea of the spiritual is a way of keeping the population doped up and subservient to (irnically) the soulless establishment.

BTW it would be wonderful if people who talk about "the spiritual" could actually define what "the spiritual" is. It is such a woolly term with no real meaning.

as in mammoth?
Happy Mammoth's Day
bogus.

 

[pelegrino]

...............

 

[pelegrino]

BTW it would be wonderful if people who talk about "the spiritual" could actually define what "the spiritual" is. It is such a woolly term with no real meaning.

Well, people from Plato down to Hegel and (sometimes) Feuerbach have really tried hard for a definition, with mixed to negative results. History could not wait anymore and simply left them behind.
(Church fathers left out deliberately)

 

[twelveoone]

Because poets don't write poetry that is relevant to people's experiences?

I can see where you are heading, the fault is not the poets but everyone else. The fault IS the poets! It is the poets who write poetry that potential readers find irrelevant and ignore.

If poets stopped arguing about what is and what is not poetry and spent more time trying to write poetry that is relelvant in the contemprary world, maybe they would find an audience. All too often poets are all too happy to live in their ivory towers, happy in the idea that they are part of a small exclusive sect that holds the secret knowledge. They don't!

I read not too long ago that more texts books about poetry criticism are sold than actual books of poetry. That is a clue where poetry is going wrong.

Bog. Poetry always has been entertainment, when it wasn't serving the dubious purpose of propaganda.