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

Tsotha

donnyQ
Joined
Aug 4, 2013
Posts
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emp says:

Poets of short poems have advantage over folks who want to really come out with technique and have a bunch to say and all the lines past 20 to say it. It's difficult sustaining the interest of dear reader in those 40+ liners, who remembers the middle-portion of Howl or the qualities of "The Mariner, so strange and unhuman"? While I know Fire and Ice and 1201's Undo Ki by heart.

I gave both of these poems 5/5 because they made the effort to say something, they fashioned quality poems(though I would criticize each poet for shrimping on poetic technique and relying too heavily on tools of prose). The slight


unquote

really, we have been down that road before
2 points
1. no comment on above said poem? unless you are the anon.
2. you know my view on the on-off bullshit, and there is no reason for a short burst of feet in a short "poem".

1201:

"Prosody doesn't 'truly' exist in written language therefore there is no real distinction between prose and poetry."

Okay, I heard you, and I don't care.

Which written language are you talking about?
Ok, define "prosody" in spoken English, if you please.
Prosody certainly exists in written classical Greek poetry.
(If you could read it in the original, that is).

It's my position, and seemingly the view of every poet who isn't 1201, that the spoken and written english language do have the elements of prosody that make metrical feet legible to the author of beowulf same as the authors on new poems page at literotica.

The reason poetry exists is probably because it's easier remembering language with rhythm ordered by stress patterns. It only takes a moderate study of poetry to see how well English grammar translates to the page to the reader. There are openings for interpretation when reading, but it's not some uncanny valley that 1201 and possibly Derrida would have you believe. Every grammar favors certain stress patterns in spoken language which can be manipulated on the page through simple act of being well read one can access such information almost immediately.

To respond to Tsotha in brief: half, internal, full rhyme, assonance, alliteration etc. There's a number of tools besides syllable and stress patterns that make poetry something different than prose. By neglecting the poetic tools and techniques we lose special traditions over time that we ought to preserve and expand on through our own creativity and care.

What does that mean?



Oh, we were discussing this over in the Metre thread. Calling it an uncanny valley might be going too far, but in my opinion it is unlikely that a reader will be capable of reading something exactly as the writer intended it to be read, unless some notation is sent along with the poem — like musicians do, when they want others to sing/play their songs.

As you say: every grammar favors certain stress patterns. Further, there obviously isn't an infinite number of ways to read something, and some ways are more likely than others simply because they "roll better" on the tongue. The poet (by writing in a deliberate manner) can try to make a certain way more appealing.

Nonetheless, there will be a lot of ways to read something. Even a single line can be read in multiple ways — give it to an actor, watch him go crazy with it. As for "the well read can access such information almost immediately"? There are people here who (as far as I can tell) are well read and who don't know what metre is. :)







Thank you for answering. I asked because I couldn't identify such tools in the poems by OpenField and Cleardaynow. All I could see was:

Three Tanka for Yosano Akiko
byOpenField©

Poetry is the sculpture of real feelings.
—Yosano Akiko

i
Fresh from her bath,
wet as a willow sapling
in clean spring rain,
she flushes newly opened,
crimson rhododendron.

ii
Parted robe,
her breasts heavy as fruit,
blossom-delicate.
I slow my breathing, so
to not bruise her spread flesh.

iii
Tangled hair
flows over my chest, a stream,
mysterious
and artful, my senses drugged
as if by incense at her touch.

If I remove the line breaks from a poem, does it stop being a poem? If I fill my prose story with alliterations, and internal rhymes, and break lines to make it look like verse, does it begin being a poem?

While I like both Three Tanka for Yosano Akiko and The Coin, I feel that the first is much closer to being prose, despite what you've said, about there being "studied technique" in it. Three Tanka is much more about the imagery it conjures than about a connection between writer and reader. The coin, on the other hand, presents a framework which requires some deeper engagement from the reader, giving only this hint: "We who live our lives within the outer margin, with sad Humanity we face our equivocal fate." You could "read it in 30 seconds, and feel like it says something", but then you'd be missing on actually connecting to its meaning.

I've read and written music since I was a kid. There are many factors that aren't included in typical notation that the musician has to interpret and inject their own creativity. It's more precise an art than interpreting Wallace Stevens, but perhaps almost as precise as a number of English language poets of the Romantic period:

Chameleons feed on light and air:
Poets' food is love and fame:
If in this wide world of care
Poets could but find the same
With as little toil as they,
Would they ever change their hue
As the light chameleons do,
Suiting it to every ray
Twenty times a day?

If you read this twice through and spoke it as you believe the author intended and 10 other poets did the same how different would each interpretation sound?

Line breaks aren't what make poems poems. ClearDayNow's poem without enjambment changes nothing:

We who live our lives within the outer margin,
with sad Humanity we face our equivocal fate.
For living is seeing a double sided coin
Spin eternally, never knowing the image that Is repeated there.
We hang suspended in our Unbelief, ever hoping, never knowing.
Protecting the hurt by saying we believe In disbelief.
Ever reeling, ever dealing, never seeing We are the thing we seek.

The internal, gerund heavy rhymes are still present. There might be a half-rhyme or two, the alliteration; it qualifies on both borders of poetry and prose. There never has been a line in the sand, while there certainly are poems that aren't prose and prose that isn't poetry. Which would be the point of protecting poetic traditions in the face of the movement toward making poetry closely resemble prose so much that it might not be worth considering it as poetry or possibly forgetting poetry altogether and let it be a dead art.

Anyway, no one's saying this couldn't be a poem and also prose. That wasn't my main criticism of The Coin, by the way, the point was that there's nothing to connect with in the poem during my thirty second read and re-read. My main criticism of Three Tanaka would be that while it fits within criteria for Tanaka, it says very little about the author as poet. It's like judging Ernest Hemingway as author based on the six words attributed to him about baby shoes for sale. There are forms such as Tanaka, Haiku, Triolet where a poet can exercise within the limited parameters quite well, OpenField is fairly successful.

Emp, I really suggest a careful reading of what I have said, you will see in certain areas I agree with you, in others I point out the that there are inherent inadequacies and disagreements to even the lastest ways if looking at your god damn holy metre.
Yes, your god damn holy metre. Wasn't it you and your friend that sort of declared a holy war against a mild manner newspaper reported such as I?
Let us examine this statement:
The reason poetry exists is probably because it's easier remembering language with rhythm ordered by stress patterns
Can metre be a mnemonic device (tool for memory) I may have pointed that out and its possible use as a cueing system.
Does poetry exist is countries that do not have stress based patterns?
Why yes, as a matter of fact your god damn holy metre was such an importation and adaptation wasn't it?
Is English stress based language, why yes, and one dirty little secret is that of any 10 syllable utterance a percentage will be pentameter. And depending on how it is scanned, the percentage could increase.
Now seriously this deserves a thread of its own, but due to Moderator A's purge of non poetry, non discussion threads (hello?) and since I been getting as apathetic as Moderator B, I am less inclined to kick your ass as I done in the past.

Not that I know much but the English or Anglo-Saxon of Beowulf has more in common with modern day Friese or even Dutch (I will insult Friesians by saying Friese is more a dialect of Dutch than a different language), than modern English. Friese is the closest living language to Anglo-Saxon. After all, while English still has a Germanic grammar at its foundation, 70% of its words are from the Latin, which has also had an affect on the grammar. Now Dutch is a far less flexible language than English. My Dutch ex used to say English is a more malleable, plastic and sing-song language than Dutch, which is why the modern Dutch import many English expressions.

Getting to the point in hand, the language of Beowulf had far more prosody than modern English and should you listen to modern Dutch (Flemish in this case) you get and idea. Hugo Claus - De Moeder , then compare it to Anglo-Saxon, then consider modern English, modern English has lost much of its orignal prosody compared to the Germanic languages it developed from.

Now after writing that, I'm not sure what my original point was, other than less bastardised modern Germanic languages have far more prosody than modern English. In fact, one of the reasons modern English is so successful as a language to sing in for many none English speakers, is its elasticity, not is prosody.

Sorry,Epmd607. I did not realize in the first place that you were quoting 1201.
You find me in accordance with the views you expressed on prosody and with your brief response to Tsotha.
:)

Hello Emp, outside of pointing out that Derrida was French...which is nation that hasn't bought into the great metre scam er, scansion, that the English fell prey to when THEY decided to emulate the Roman Empire and adopt the Holy Metre, without...ah never mind, I lost interest...and as far as that goes, those traitorous bastards (the so-called Americans) who left the great mothership during a time when our beloved King, who couldn't even speak English, then have been more inclined to Free Verse. Free Verse and no Tea Tax, I believe those heathen savages proclaimed.
I digress.
Monty Python Rules.
And they are Engrish.
Rearry.
Btw I have passed beyond the uncanny valley into the plains of hyperreality and moved up to the mountains of hyperunreality. It is a lovely view. Of Text and Signs and Shit. i.e. it is the degree of concentrated psychological manipulation that largely separates poetry from prose.
Your beefs may be valid, but red beefs cause a colon cancer of the mind, which would be a great title, except for the fact someone would accuse me of stealin it from Ferlinghetti (who was Free Verser also)
Or as Wittgenstein might have said, but probably didn't:
You can't get shit from a rose
But you can grow better roses with shit than without.
so there!
LONG LIVE MARK!
groucho and harpo and chico and zeppo (gummo booked before the big time)
hidden because I don't want to upset litmoda or litmodb

Oh, wow. :) That was beautiful.

However, you should stop at the mountains. Don't wander into Carcosa.



A little different. But then, that is a very well behaved group of words.



All I see are words. Sometimes they inform, sometimes they have rhythm, sometimes they are put in a form (a pyramid, a block, paragraphs), sometimes they flow free, sometimes rhyme. Sometimes they create an emotional connection, sometimes they push me away into complete apathy. Sometimes I can see intent, sometimes I see thoughtlessness.

I created a thread so that the people here who are far more wise and knowledgeable than me could explain to me the difference between poetry and prose, and they came up with a lot of different answers. Apparently, it's not so easy to define poetry. Well, except for Senna Jawa, who thinks the question is stupid. But Senna Jawa is an idiot.

So, poetic traditions. Another answer — thank you.



Well, I connected to The Coin.

1.) A good poem should find itself conjuring a variety of images, feelings, personal memories from a dedicated reader. There's not much of a crowd that would favor such a thing as an objective aesthetics ie 'I find this piece pleasurable, it made me think of my long dead dog companion from childhood and everyone else should take pleasure in the same way as me.' However, what can be criticized about a poem and not a short story?

2.) Does the author utilize any of the traditional structures, meter, forms of poetry?
Take a look at Tzara's thread of forms if your curious in what traditional structures might look like.

3.) Is there stanza, how are the lines organized? This is where the prosaic 'poets' often sneak by. Poetry is interested in how lines look, is there aesthetic symmetry, does the author utilize line breaks in place of periods, semicolon or commas? A prosaic poet who isn't interested in poetic beauty, will order their run-on and fragment sentences under a vague license appealing to aesthetics.

Here is where prosaic poets most often come up short:

4.) Does the author utilize assonance, internal rhyme, end rhyme, slant rhyme, alliteration, consonance, the tongue twister...? The list is a long one and there is great detail and variation to each category which the practiced poet studies and refines creating their own individual technique. James Joyce, who began professional life as a polished poet, often utilized poetic techniques in his stories. Would you take a few sentences out of a paragraph from Stephen Hero and call that bit poetry and the surrounding bit prose?

Such ordered stanza as blank verse exist where point 4 is largely ignored.

Most poems written this year would generally fall under the strictures of free verse. Free verse can't possibly include all of prose and a good chunk of poetry, right? Free verse removes itself for the most part from point 2 but adopts points 3, 4 as gospel. It's the longest of conversations, why do the free verse poets still use poetic techniques from point 4 and even some semblance of meter, syllable counting etc. and not just write a little story under the guise of point 3? Since poetry is such a thing that is so undefinable as to have every modern poem transmogrifying with every story and also news article and technical manual, text message...

The only point at which prose and poetry meet would be point 1. Maybe it's boring, that we're so anti-form that we'd enjoy every poem consisting of 12-20 lines of alliteration, internal rhyme and each stanza ending on a half rhyme(resembling most modern rap songs, not coincidentally).

For the last few days I have felt a bit like a cadaver must feel while the professor carves it up and explains the bits to the assembled medical students.

I am not going to talk about ‘The Coin’ except to say that my take in the poem is contained in a comment I left on the poem itself and that I do think removing the enjambment does change the poem. Not in terms of gerunds – amazingly they are still there – but because change of line ending alters pause and stress.

One thing that does interest me is the nature and meaning of poetry. I apologise that I am only half way through reading everything on the ‘What is a poem?’ thread – I want to absorb not just skim through – but I wanted to write this before this discussion drifted into the usual oblivion. So please excuse me if some of what I say is covered in the thread or I am teaching my grandmother to suck eggs.

I think there is much I agree with & a certain amount I disagree with on the entries relating to these two poems.

I suppose in essence I would say that any definitions of what poetry is (or is not) or dividing ‘poems’ into poetry, prose poems, prose etc are pragmatic categorisations for useful convenience only (a tautology but useful for emphasis). It really does not matter whether a piece falls into a category. What does matter is whether or not it is ‘good’.

Which, of course, is just moving the problem along. What is good poetry? Again in short, I would say it is good if it moves people – i.e. in its impact. Which then brings us to the nature and possibly quality of that ‘moving’. For example, I would have great difficulty in thinking a poem (or prose) that extolled ‘Diana, you are the people’s princess and will always be queen in our hearts’ good poetry (or prose) even though lots of people would be moved to tears. I am itching to expand and qualify the above but will keep it to just that for now.

I believe it is extremely helpful to look at the other ‘arts’ and see what they tell us – particularly music and visual arts (painting). All the arts apart from literature have gone through radical transformations over the past hundred years or so, through dialectic processes relating to non European cultures. I think that it is worth stressing that ‘synthesis’ is a radical process – mixing oxygen and hydrogen together is not synthesis but applying a match does result in synthesis (please do not try this at home). So painting and poetry, principally through the influence of Japanese poetry and art, have been deconstructed so every single rule about what art must or should be has been questioned and effectively removed. The haiku was not just another structure, another ‘-ameter’ it threw out most of the then poetry rules and Japanese art showed you could have great beauty, specifically without perspective – both leading to all rules being questioned.

British/American/European Music had been an uneasy balance between ‘classical’ (i.e. rich people’s) music and poor people’s music. Synthesis between that and Afro-American music led to our current situation.

It is interesting that there is now no divide into rich people’s and poor people’s music but in painting you get very rich people paying silly money for ‘designer label’ art. Possibly as a consequence music is in a very healthy state (I assert) but ‘art’ is not. Artists seem to be obsessed with what is or is not art & in Britain you get the annual Turner Prize. This utterly ludicrous event is culturally on a par with the Eurovision Song Contest. Each year the Turner committee strives to find the weirdest thing to award the prize to. Both contests have a fascination for us in seeing just how awful the winner will be, how underhand the scoring will be and the vain hope that at least one entry will actually be any good. The biggest difference is that two hundred million Europeans do not think that the Turner Prize matters. Basically, the ‘art’ world has disappeared up its own arsehole. There is a massive gulf between the ‘art’ establishment’s view of art and the public’s.

Music is far healthier (I submit). When I was a lad, there was a complete gulf between ‘classical’ music and popular music. Then anyone who played or listened to classical music had no time or respect for popular music. Jazz held an uneasy position between the two – possibly combining the worst of both worlds culturally. Whether or not you like or rate the Beatles, Stones etc., their explosion changed the music world. Now we have a situation where classical musicians back rock stars, most younger classical players will be steeped in and like popular music and many rock singers/musicians will have a considerable knowledge and liking for Bach, Beethoven & Mozart. Many or most of us will like, love and listen to a cross section of music. The real issue for any piece of music we listen to is how much we like or love it – how good it is. Some people will mainly or solely like narrow genres – which is OK by the rest of us. Much of the best music in the early days of this change was written and performed by people with little or no formal training or knowledge of musical theory and technique.

The music genres have moved subtly to being defined by what is good or best within them. Thus classical music is effectively now defined by its centre of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, etc rather than by a set of rules defining the nature of classical music. Rock music is defined by the greats while the rest fade away. Thus when the Beetles and Stones broke America, Hermans Hermits were actually more popular there but now they are (thankfully) forgotten.

What determines that a particular piece of classical or rock music is good? Fuck knows. In the centuries following Bach, Beethoven, Mozart lots of composers and critics had a far deeper knowledge of the musical structures, techniques etc than those three themselves did – yet could these people produce music that was as good – despite knowing all the ‘rules’ or techniques used? No. It is argued that that was because music had moved on. That is crap. If any of those three had lived longer healthily (particularly Mozart who died very young) they would have produced more great music recognisably in their style but separate. Yet no one, even as an exercise, can produce a ‘Bach, Beethoven or Mozart’ piece that we would want to listen to. Similarly, no one can produce an early Dylan song (including Dylan sadly).

So, looking at something that claims to be a poem – or a piece of music. The first thing is does it move you? In some way? This is fundamentally the only thing that matters.

I would say that secondly, having decided whether it moves you, you can look at three things to help understand why:
• What does it convey or try to convey (mainly but not solely the logical content – thus ‘the hammer, hammer, hammer on the hard dry road’ conveys the sense of riding a horse on a road – rather well). Is it subtle and deep or banal (Di, queen of our hearts)? I am reasonably certain that this is the most important thing for any poem
• Flow, simply does it sound good and support the message
• What is its logical and physical structure

Only then is it thirdly helpful to see, particularly for the flow, whether it is using specific poetic techniques.

As to what sub genre of poetry or prose it belongs to, who gives a fuck.

Just my current thoughts – in a bit of a rush.

:)
Keeping the review thread clean!
Let's keep this discussion somewhere else too. In another thread, perhaps.
As I don't have always access to the net I'm copying all these post to read them at home later and make up my mind whether I want to reply to anyone.

Just some quick thoughts.

1. Let music genres define themselves, they do it quite well. Just look for those definitions.
2. Classical music is still defined by sets of rules (very strict at times) and not by three big names. Actually Bach belongs to the baroque and not the classical era, but even him, great as he may be, cannot alone define baroque music. Therefore, I disagree with you here.
3. As no.2 above, rock music is not defined by its "greats" but by rules also. I am a Beatles and Stones fanatic, but I don't find anything wrong with Hermans Hermits, because "something tells me I'm into something good" even there (as far as rock is concerned).
4. "Fuck" does not really know all that much about music. Musicians and academics usually do. Quite well some times!
5. Bach, Mozart and Beethoven knew whatever was worth knowing about music up to their respective dates ie. 1685-1750, 1756-1791 & 1770-1827. That includes melody construction, (the first two were natural melodists and Beethoven a hard worker), Harmony, counterpoint, fugue techniques, orchestration and the major and minor forms of their times, ie. binary and ternary sonata forms, rondos, concerto, ouverture, symphony, various dance forms, etc. etc.
The way you put it you would have us believe that they knew nothing.
Later composers and scholars had more accumulated historical and technical knowledge, but they did not know anything more in depth really about baroque and classicism than the three composers mentioned.
These later composers (and up to this date) have also produced equally great music.
If people remember Bach and ignore Bela Bartok it is neither here nor there. Bartok is equally great.
6. It is not crap that music has moved on. It really has moved on! Where would we be if it had not?
7. It is not a requirement (aesthetic or otherwise) for our times and for present day main stream composers to produce pieces in baroque or classical style. Is it? This 2014.
Tonality is dead since c.1900. Some reactionary bastards have invented minimalism and new simplicity and god knows what, but there are also some more positive signs of tonal music coming back from 1980 onwards.
8. Reproducing the styles of baroque and classical eras is standard curriculum exercise in all conservatories and musical academies. Study in depth is taking place. Aesthetic results are quite successful. What more should we ask from students? It would be silly to expect them to write like Bach etc. They study him so they are able someday to write like themselves.
Why anyone nowadays would want to write an early Dylan song? (including Dylan, gladly).
:)

yo, dipodic ballad stucture
I've heard, but WTF do I know?

And you know goddanm well I could shred everyone of your points, but the cyan terror is a much more kinder gentle person

Thank you Pelegrino for your really interesting response based on what clearly is a deep knowledge of music.

I do want to respond to this in some detail because I think that by analogy it touches on two key questions. Firstly, through asking what ‘good’ poetry is, we are asking what we can aspire and strive towards. Secondly, there is the question of the extent and way our understanding various aspects of poetry can actually help us in practice to write better poetry.

I did express myself poorly in at least one place if I gave the impression that I thought Bach et al had poor theoretical knowledge of music when they wrote. That was not the point I was trying to make.

I want to first read and think about the ‘What is a poem?’ thread before responding as it is the analogy with poetry that drives me rather than just academic discussion of music. I will probably respond on that thread. I may be some time.

If anyone knows any other threads I should read on this, do please let me know – as obviously people will have been going round and round this one over the past ten years.

This thread, which was bumped by Todski, seems to be in the same vein as the "What is a poem?" thread. Interesting read (I'm only halfway through it).

EDIT: and another... Tod is pretty good at finding things in the forum. :D

Cleardaynow, we make our categories and order are departments because we're trying to get at what makes a poem good vs. what makes a poem passable vs. what makes a poem completely uninteresting. The tedium and banter over prose vs. poem is just one road to discovery.

1201, if you had points to make, I'm sure you'd make them. As we're on a message board and not 1201's journal and criticism is what keeps this ship from sinking. Someone constantly harbinging on reciprocal criticism should have figured that out by now. You aren't criticizing my statements only to prove to me how wonderful you are, correct? The riddles and ill sourced references have worn out their welcome with me. I'll reply to your points or queries if they actually refer to the discussion taking place.

Now Emp, if you were observant you might have noticed, that we are NOT that far apart, I probably have posted more concerning poetry including Formalist than the next three people here. I believe I have did more actual parsing than anyone else. I also believe I have stated that I could be wrong about half the time, and people should be skeptical. I have also left more comments than you, this ONE poem that I wrote that you liked, I did not see a comment, nor have I seen much in regarding to the specifics of a poem from you. Nor references come to think of it.

I don't like dogmatism from any quarter and you seem to be a bit dogmatic, inconsistent, and not much fun.
What fucking scares you is that I just may be right the other half of the time. Get over your fear. Generative metrics and cognitive poetry (and other things) just may be on to something. You can google the terms and decide for yourself.
Grafting a system designed for one thing on another will lead to problems, poets themselves recognized it for something like 500 years.
What you (and others) try to do is take a limited knowledge and use it to set up a hierarchy, and anyone that questions it is a blasphemer . 1.) the knowledge itself is flawed and 2.) because someone is agnostic doesn't mean that the knowledge they have is less than that of a believer.
In other words, what makes a poem interesting to you, may not be the same as what makes a poem interesting to me. The standard rhyme and metre have fallen out of favour as best as I can tell, why? What replaces it? A large amount of junk. However, when the standard poetry rules ruled the roost, what was generated? A large amount of junk.

I don't follow, nor do I lead, you can perceive that as an enigma.

And 5,000+ posts is NOT an inordinate number for ten years.

Enjambment has an impact, it is primarily visual, the text is visual. There is debate as to, whether it has an auditory effect.

Now why should a poem say anything about the Author, what are we judging here? It is not that I totally buy the Death of the Author bullshit, but I'd be less inclined to buy your line of reasoning.

The writer wrote a three tanaka's, if the writer writers three more, and then three more, if would be a safe assumption the writer is probably a tanaka writer, what more do you need to know, her shoe size? What is behind this, confessionalism creeping in?

I've got to agree here. It is all artifice.

I've often wondered why so many people seem to expect poetry to be somehow autobiographical and essentially factual. It's as though they see poetry as some sort of prayer that only has power if it is being truthful to god. But why? We are all the creator of our own delusions which are all fictions. Whether god and/or truth exists or not is rather irrelevant because we'll never know. Certainly not this side of the grave. We create our own realites, we create our own truths and we lie all the time. It's all artifice.

Just my humble opinion.

E--'s still running engrams and is behind in his payments to the Church of Poetology.
Out, out of this clam like existence
and tied to a volcano so long ago
Fuck Xenue who looked
like S----- J---
in his forgotten youth.
And that folks
is the lordy truth.

but it costs $500 an hour,
HALF OFF
now for a limited time only $249.75

Bill MOYERS: What is the metaphor?

Joseph CAMPBELL: A metaphor is an image that suggests something else. For instance, if I say to a person, "You are a nut," I'm not suggesting that I think the person is literally a nut. "Nut" is a metaphor. The reference of the metaphor in religious traditions is to something transcendent that is not literally any thing. If you think that the metaphor is itself the reference, it would be like going to a restaurant, asking for the menu, seeing beefsteak written there, and starting to eat the menu.

For example, Jesus ascended to heaven. The denotation would seem to be that somebody ascended to the sky. That’s literally what is being said. But if that were really the meaning of the message, then we have to throw it away, because there would have been no such place for Jesus literally to go. We know that Jesus could not have ascended to heaven because there is no physical heaven anywhere in the universe. Even ascending at the speed of light, Jesus would still be in the galaxy, Astronomy and physics have simply eliminated that as a literal, physical possibility. But if you read "Jesus ascended to heaven" in terms of its metaphoric connotation, you see that he has gone inward – not into outer space but into inward space, to the place from which all being comes, into the consciousness that is the source of all things, the kingdom of heaven within. The images are outward, but their reflection is inward. The point is that we should ascend with him by going inward. It is a metaphor of returning to the source, alpha and omega, of leaving the fixation on the body behind and going to the body’s dynamic source.

MOYERS: Aren’t you undermining one of the great traditional doctrines of the classic Christian faith – that the burial and the resurrection of Jesus prefigures our own?

CAMPBELL: That would be a mistake in the reading of the symbol. That is reading the words in terms of prose instead of in terms of poetry, reading the metaphor in terms of the denotation instead of the connotation.

MOYERS: And poetry gets to the unseen reality.

CAMPBELL: That which is beyond even the concept of reality, that which transcends all thought. The myth puts you there all the time, gives you a line to connect with that mystery which you are.

....
CAMPBELL: All poets. Poetry is a metaphorical language.

MOYERS: A metaphor suggests potential.

CAMPBELL: Yes, but it also sugests the actuality that hides behind the visible aspect. The metaphor is the mask of God through which eternity is to be experienced.

http://mythsdreamssymbols.com/metaphorandtranscendence.html

I think that last bit especially is a great definition of how metaphor works--when it works well--in poetry. I might say "being" or "life" instead of "God" because people have so many different (and potentially negative) narratives attached to the G-word, but that's me. When a metaphor touches a reader it's because he or she is experiencing some universal that is expressed with the words. Imho.

I agree with this comment, I mean with metaphor expressing the "universal" rather than the "eternal".
My opinion is that eternity is quite finite and recyclable, and in any way, that god does not exist.
I do think that we need another thread for this discussion.
:)

So start a thread. :) I am loathe to move any posts at this point because I know it's going to piss off somebody or other, but there's no reason why we can't have a discussion thread. I don't care which forum it is in as long as we all try to keep the main forum poetry oriented. My only concern is that the poem writing threads not get buried in a deluge of general discussion threads.

Emp, if jesus was god, god could do anything he goddamn wanted, violate space time, anything
sorta like I do when I violate your holy metre. only with me, it is a lot easier, its only text. and there is probably a metaphor behind it. or at least a reason. and you thought it was just incompetence. or just failing to tow your the line.

what's up next? a transcript of Oprah with the guy that lied in his autobiography?
Everything I right is true, I'm flat and black now, I swear to God. Zap him Jesus. And bring my H's back.

they kind of have to, freud is god

Doing what I can with the tools available, since the people with the right tools won't bother.
 
Doing what I can with the tools available, since the people with the right tools won't bother.

Gee Tsotha and I was going to thank you for starting the thread. Well thank you anyway. :)

And did you mean "multiquote" by "available tools" because that is the same way I would have done it. There is no other tool to do it faster and more efficiently. Anyone could have started the thread if they so chose.
 
1.) A good poem should find itself conjuring a variety of images, feelings, personal memories from a dedicated reader. There's not much of a crowd that would favor such a thing as an objective aesthetics ie 'I find this piece pleasurable, it made me think of my long dead dog companion from childhood and everyone else should take pleasure in the same way as me.' However, what can be criticized about a poem and not a short story?

2.) Does the author utilize any of the traditional structures, meter, forms of poetry?
Take a look at Tzara's thread of forms if your curious in what traditional structures might look like.

3.) Is there stanza, how are the lines organized? This is where the prosaic 'poets' often sneak by. Poetry is interested in how lines look, is there aesthetic symmetry, does the author utilize line breaks in place of periods, semicolon or commas? A prosaic poet who isn't interested in poetic beauty, will order their run-on and fragment sentences under a vague license appealing to aesthetics.

Here is where prosaic poets most often come up short:

4.) Does the author utilize assonance, internal rhyme, end rhyme, slant rhyme, alliteration, consonance, the tongue twister...? The list is a long one and there is great detail and variation to each category which the practiced poet studies and refines creating their own individual technique. James Joyce, who began professional life as a polished poet, often utilized poetic techniques in his stories. Would you take a few sentences out of a paragraph from Stephen Hero and call that bit poetry and the surrounding bit prose?

Such ordered stanza as blank verse exist where point 4 is largely ignored.

Most poems written this year would generally fall under the strictures of free verse. Free verse can't possibly include all of prose and a good chunk of poetry, right? Free verse removes itself for the most part from point 2 but adopts points 3, 4 as gospel. It's the longest of conversations, why do the free verse poets still use poetic techniques from point 4 and even some semblance of meter, syllable counting etc. and not just write a little story under the guise of point 3? Since poetry is such a thing that is so undefinable as to have every modern poem transmogrifying with every story and also news article and technical manual, text message...

The only point at which prose and poetry meet would be point 1. Maybe it's boring, that we're so anti-form that we'd enjoy every poem consisting of 12-20 lines of alliteration, internal rhyme and each stanza ending on a half rhyme(resembling most modern rap songs, not coincidentally).

So, in your opinion, a poem is necessarily written within a form?
 
For a limited time only, 12 rounds
FOR THE BULLSHIT CHAMPION OF THE WORLD

EMP#67 VS xxxx (formerly the numbered one)
Tickets on sale now.
actually freud is god was a smart retort to somebody else.

ah, the hell with it, its WWF royal rumble
 
For a limited time only, 12 rounds
FOR THE BULLSHIT CHAMPION OF THE WORLD

EMP#67 VS xxxx (formerly the numbered one)
Tickets on sale now.
actually freud is god was a smart retort to somebody else.

ah, the hell with it, its WWF royal rumble

More like WTF imho, but have fun. :D
 
Thank you very much Tsotha for creating this thread. I was going to do it after Angeline suggested it.You really saved me a lot of work that I don't have time to do as I don't always have access to the net.
:rose:
 
@Epmd607 I'm not sure what you are getting at in reply to my post. All I said was poetry was artifice. A metaphor is artifice, like all language. Language is made of series of symbols, visual on a page or sound symbols. I is not me, it is a signifier of the object that is me. Artifice. It is all artifice. There is no truth.
 
So, in your opinion, a poem is necessarily written within a form?
good start, sorry, I got carried away, you know, memories.
But, a little history, they are not Formalists in the sense of writing in strict forms, they have a sense that people should do a little more, than just submit prose with line breaks. We are in agreement on that.
And bflagsst who I assume (but could be wrong) is Openfield. Both (?) I would recommend reading as they have an instinct for vowel sounds and its role in poetry.
However, there is another loaded gun, as they tend to be not as fixed, as they assume.
 
good start, sorry, I got carried away, you know, memories.
But, a little history, they are not Formalists in the sense of writing in strict forms, they have a sense that people should do a little more, than just submit prose with line breaks. We are in agreement on that.
And bflagsst who I assume (but could be wrong) is Openfield. Both (?) I would recommend reading as they have an instinct for vowel sounds and its role in poetry.
However, there is another loaded gun, as they tend to be not as fixed, as they assume.

I feel I'm getting close to being able to answer my question, "what is a poem?". Well, or giving the first version of my answer.
 
I feel I'm getting close to being able to answer my question, "what is a poem?". Well, or giving the first version of my answer.
Don't go there, done, there is no answer that is applicable across the spectrum.
What is a poem to you? And then we get into Subjective Evaluation, which is a thread that was buried.
Ad nauseam
To rephase it as What is your comfort zone? may be a little more telling.
 
Don't go there, done, there is no answer that is applicable across the spectrum.
What is a poem to you? And then we get into Subjective Evaluation, which is a thread that was buried.
Ad nauseam
To rephase it as What is your comfort zone? may be a little more telling.

Yes, what is a poem to me. If you're going to write a "poem", it's a good idea to have an opinion.
 
Yes, what is a poem to me. If you're going to write a "poem", it's a good idea to have an opinion.
ah, yah.
But in the worst case scenario, the opinion solidifies around oneself. Second worst it solidifies around one's group. Third worst are "truisms", and rigorously applying outside the group. Don't take this as a blanket condemnation here, it is not. But you have seen one already.
As far as them poem goes, everyone has its own logic. Its own audience.
I shut up now, Emp might get angry. Accuse me of thread whoring. I get angry I accuse him of non-comment leaving. It get ugly. It look like Marvel comics and big green thing smash things.
 
I would recommend reading:

Thomas Love Peacock's The Four Ages of Poetry, and

Shelley's more famous response A Defence of Poetry.

Peacock was being deliberately provocative, and although he and Shelley were friends, Shelley was upset by The Four Ages of Poetry, referring as it did to the modern poet as 'a semi-barbarian in a civilised community' and other perjorative terms.
 
ah, yah.
But in the worst case scenario, the opinion solidifies around oneself. Second worst it solidifies around one's group. Third worst are "truisms", and rigorously applying outside the group. Don't take this as a blanket condemnation here, it is not. But you have seen one already.
As far as them poem goes, everyone has its own logic. Its own audience.
I shut up now, Emp might get angry. Accuse me of thread whoring. I get angry I accuse him of non-comment leaving. It get ugly. It look like Marvel comics and big green thing smash things.

I'm aware of the dangers of religion. :) Especially those that aren't recognized as such.

I would recommend reading:

Thomas Love Peacock's The Four Ages of Poetry, and

Shelley's more famous response A Defence of Poetry.

Peacock was being deliberately provocative, and although he and Shelley were friends, Shelley was upset by The Four Ages of Poetry, referring as it did to the modern poet as 'a semi-barbarian in a civilised community' and other perjorative terms.

Sometimes, the very civilized are indistinguishable from barbarians, I think. A matter of survival. Thank you for the recommendation, it sounds interesting.
 
Thank you for the birthday wishes.

Last night's celebration meal pushed my blood sugar higher than it should be, but even my doctor (seen this morning) agrees that I'm not 70 every day, and a high reading was acceptable - once!
 
Originally Posted by Epmd607 View Post
Bill MOYERS: What is the metaphor?

Joseph CAMPBELL: A metaphor is an image that suggests something else. For instance, if I say to a person, "You are a nut," I'm not suggesting that I think the person is literally a nut. "Nut" is a metaphor. The reference of the metaphor in religious traditions is to something transcendent that is not literally any thing. If you think that the metaphor is itself the reference, it would be like going to a restaurant, asking for the menu, seeing beefsteak written there, and starting to eat the menu.

For example, Jesus ascended to heaven. The denotation would seem to be that somebody ascended to the sky. That’s literally what is being said. But if that were really the meaning of the message, then we have to throw it away, because there would have been no such place for Jesus literally to go. We know that Jesus could not have ascended to heaven because there is no physical heaven anywhere in the universe. Even ascending at the speed of light, Jesus would still be in the galaxy, Astronomy and physics have simply eliminated that as a literal, physical possibility. But if you read "Jesus ascended to heaven" in terms of its metaphoric connotation, you see that he has gone inward – not into outer space but into inward space, to the place from which all being comes, into the consciousness that is the source of all things, the kingdom of heaven within. The images are outward, but their reflection is inward. The point is that we should ascend with him by going inward. It is a metaphor of returning to the source, alpha and omega, of leaving the fixation on the body behind and going to the body’s dynamic source.

MOYERS: Aren’t you undermining one of the great traditional doctrines of the classic Christian faith – that the burial and the resurrection of Jesus prefigures our own?

CAMPBELL: That would be a mistake in the reading of the symbol. That is reading the words in terms of prose instead of in terms of poetry, reading the metaphor in terms of the denotation instead of the connotation.

MOYERS: And poetry gets to the unseen reality.

CAMPBELL: That which is beyond even the concept of reality, that which transcends all thought. The myth puts you there all the time, gives you a line to connect with that mystery which you are.

....
CAMPBELL: All poets. Poetry is a metaphorical language.

MOYERS: A metaphor suggests potential.

CAMPBELL: Yes, but it also sugests the actuality that hides behind the visible aspect. The metaphor is the mask of God through which eternity is to be experienced.

http://mythsdreamssymbols.com/metaph...scendence.html


Emp is being cute, by seeing the first set of lines here, and loading the message by implication.
Campbell is on firm ground, in the first paragraph.

Campbell proceeds with:
Jesus ascended to heaven. The denotation would seem to be that somebody ascended to the sky. That’s literally what is being said....But if you read "Jesus ascended to heaven" in terms of its metaphoric connotation, you see that he has gone inward ...

MOYERS: A metaphor suggests potential.

CAMPBELL: Yes, but it also sugests the actuality that hides behind the visible aspect. The metaphor is the mask of God through which eternity is to be experienced.

Most of the conversation does not have to do with metaphor per se, but rather Campbell's perception of it as a metaphor for something else, that is it's potential or possibility. It exists for just about two words in combination in English.
But, not its probability
"Jesus ascended to heaven" over the course of use probably was excepted as the literal truth far more than Campbell's use here.
It is probably unlikely "Jesus ascended to heaven" was conceived as a metaphor. if so, a metaphor for what?
I am not arguing religion here. This is a problem with communication. Extraneous information.
 
Emp and others in the past have implied that the rules of metre are somehow inviolate. uS unstressed stressed.
It is possible for any poem to be read aloud in the same way.
It is more probable it won't be.

You as an individual often cannot say the same thing three times in a row, without a variation. This is the way language works, new information will be emphasized. In the absence of new information it will be improvised. Its relationship in context may also not be the same.
Fuck you
Fuck you
Fuck you
Fuck you
Say it.
All well and good, so far?
 
Emp and others in the past have implied that the rules of metre are somehow inviolate. uS unstressed stressed.
It is possible for any poem to be read aloud in the same way.
It is more probable it won't be.

You as an individual often cannot say the same thing three times in a row, without a variation. This is the way language works, new information will be emphasized. In the absence of new information it will be improvised. Its relationship in context may also not be the same.
Fuck you
Fuck you
Fuck you
Fuck you
Say it.
All well and good, so far?

I remember when English actors used to have a favourite exercise:

Reading the Telephone Directory verbatim and making an audience laugh or cry.

Richard Burton excelled at it.
 
Now the merit of discussion over two or three poems in a thread. If the poem is in new poems, that is what comments are for. Over there.
Comparing them here begins to raise ethical considerations, and as to which one is better, political.
Undo Ki (mine) which Emp brought up, had no comment over there, (while I'm glad he liked it) is based on a bilingual pun, which would reek of cleverness, if anybody got it as a poem, amusing. To compare to Openfield's? It is similar.
No contest. Openfield wins.
Anything else said by me, here, would be unsolicited.
To compare either poem to the Coin, dangerous ground.
 
I remember when English actors used to have a favourite exercise:

Reading the Telephone Directory verbatim and making an audience laugh or cry.

Richard Burton excelled at it.
That blew up on me more than once, writing something I thought was riotous. And the reader found poignant.
hey happy birthday.
 
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