reid@uwvax.UUCP (06/23/83)
Nothing personal, but most of the poetry I have seen here more closely resembles "stream-of-consciousness" writing. It is not poetry, in my opinion, and not very interesting, for another opinion. Open your favorite volume of poetry (usually about 1-1/2" thick) and *try* to find a poem in there with no rhyme scheme, no stanza structure, or no apparent cohesion of some sort. I'll bet you can't find two poems. There is a *good* reason for that. Anything else is only very warily considered poetry. A poem is a dance or words, in a sense, and a pleasant feeling can be found in just reading it aloud, because of the cohesion and alliteration and meter and rhyme and so forth. That is why it is poetry in the first place, and I am willing to argue about that. In any case, again at the risk of offending everybody in this newsgroup, I would rather not read people's diary entries, but some real live poetry. I have submitted maybe two poems of my own writing here, because they take time to write, and are difficult to write. That is why there are so few poets--it is not easy to write poetry. And if you can't write poetry yourself, then dig out your "Golden Age of Poetry" volume, and type in your favorite Long- fellow poem, then sit down with it and look *very* carefully at all the structure that is there that you took for granted all these years.... Glenn Reid ..seismo!uwvax!reid
rh@mit-eddi.UUCP (Randy Haskins) (06/26/83)
On Glenn Reid's comments on form: In my high school literary magazine, I was always blown away by the number of poems that were submitted to us. I was always a prose writer. I found it freer of artistic constraint and form, despite stereotypes of poetry. Glenn was wrong, poetry is easy to write. That's why we got so many submissions. After I read them, however, I came to a conclusion that would say that Glenn's statement needs only a slight modification: GOOD poetry is difficult to write. That's why only a very few submissions were printed. -Randy rh@mit-eddie
ellis@flairvax.UUCP (06/27/83)
In response to recent criticism of the poetry submitted to this group:
I, for one, enjoy reading anything anyone has the guts to put in here.
I don't care if it rhymes or not. Please keep sending your thoughts,
whether they were "stream of consciousness" or carefully thought out.
Just another opinion -- Michaelgovern@houxf.UUCP (06/28/83)
Glenn Reid complains about the lack of structure in poetry, especially rhyme scheme, stanzas, etc. If you read the introduction to Paradise Lost, you'll see Milton complaining that too many people equate poetry with rhyme. He's really heavy on rhythm, flow of images, literary allusions to the point of tedium, but his poetry is much more readable than it would be if he had forced it to rhyme.
reid@uwvax.UUCP (07/02/83)
In response to the article about Milton and rhyme -- I agree. I never said
that rhyme, per se, was necessary, nor necessarily stanza structure, but you'll
certainly find structure in Milton's verse. He alliterates like crazy, uses
strings of nouns, all kinds of "specialized" constructs which, in a sense,
cause the Form of the poem (the Language--including syntax, phonetics, seman-
tics, whatever works) to *reinforce* the Meaning of the poem. You will find
in Milton, for example, that the syntax, especially, is carefully controlled
so that in descriptive passages or action passages the syntax will flow
smoothly or be particularly rocky, depending on the sense of the passage.
I'll see if I can dig up an example out of "Paradise Lost" . . . .
"Before the Gates there sat
On either side a formidable shape;
The one seem'd Woman to the waist, and fair,
But ended foul in many a scaly fold
Voluminous and vast, a Serpent Arm'd
With mortal sting: about her middle round
A cry of Hell Hounds never ceasing bark'd
With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and rung
A hideous Peal: yet, when they list, would creep,
If aught disturb'd thir noise, into her womb,
And kennel there, yet there sill bark'd and howl'd
Within unseen. Far less abhorr'd than these
Vex'd Scylla bathing in the Sea that parts
Calabria from the hoarse Trinacrian shore:
Nor uglier follow the Night-Hag, when call'd
In secret, riding through the Air she comes
Lur'd with the smell of infant blood to dance
With Lapland Witches, while the laboring Moon
Eclipses at thir charms."
There are only two sentences here, and they are very complex. There are many
instances of alliteration, he uses apostrophes to modify the pronunciation
slightly (since the way the passage *sounds* was crafted very carefully by
Milton), and so on. It is pretty hard to deny that there is structure in
this stuff, although not your basic iambic pentameter. Milton is probably
a bad one to pick to illustrate lack of form. In any case, I should
generalize more:
In "Good" poetry there is some connection, or parallel, between
the language used and the sense of the poem. It sounds pretty stupid, but
if you think carefully about your favorite poems, the flow, sound, and
esthetic beauty of the language itself is what makes it such a good poem,
not just what is said. Poetry is not merely a method to make some point,
but is like story-telling or art in that the medium itself is important.
Enough said. But it is a good topic for discussion. It is the essense
of poetry, methinks.
Glenn Reid (I started all this, I must admit....)
...seismo!uwvax!reid