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Bflag's Pleasures of Criticism

Trixareforkids said:
Confessional impersonal is an oxymoron.
The word confession implies guilt, sin, a dirty secret. Relaying a memory does not necessarily make something confessional, just personal, even when tied to the universal.
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hey, trix, i think this quote goes a long way to explaining 'confessional' as it's being applied here:

confessional poetry, an autobiographical mode of verse that reveals the poet's personal problems with unusual frankness. The term is usually applied to certain poets of the United States from the late 1950s to the late 1960s, notably Robert Lowell, whose Life Studies (1959) and For the Union Dead (1964) deal with his divorce and mental breakdowns. Lowell's candour had been encouraged in part by that of the gay poet Allen Ginsberg in Howl (1956) and by the intensely personal poetry of Theodore Roethke. Other important examples of confessional poetry are Anne Sexton's To Bedlam and Part Way Back (1960) and All My Pretty Ones (1962), including poems on abortion and life in mental hospitals; John Berryman's Dream Songs (1964) on alcoholism and insanity; Sylvia Plath's poems on suicide in Ariel (1965); and W. D. Snodgrass's Heart's Needle (1969) on his divorce. The term is sometimes used more loosely to refer to any personal or autobiographical poetry, but its distinctive sense depends on the candid examination of what were at the time of writing virtually unmentionable kinds of private distress. The genuine strengths of confessional poets, combined with the pity evoked by their high suicide rate (Berryman, Sexton, and Plath all killed themselves), encouraged in the reading public a romantic confusion between poetic excellence and inner torment.

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/confessional-poetry#ixzz3CBddN2Mb
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Trixareforkids said:
Confessional impersonal is an oxymoron.
The word confession implies guilt, sin, a dirty secret. Relaying a memory does not necessarily make something confessional, just personal, even when tied to the universal.
Click to expand...

I meant it to take up the space where the author is telling their own dirty little autobiographical secrets, regrets, victories, sadnesses, gladnesses through the voice of another. A male author here once enjoyed writing poems from a female perspective. Say he was genuinely trying to put on his own female perspective and not just mimicking, fooling the reader and was giving autobiographical confessions; that wouldn't quite fit either of my confessional categories.
 
Trixareforkids said:
Yes, I went looking for definitions, still don't think it goes together with "impersonal"

And certainly not with my piece about my sister. Telling someone else's story is not confessional. He seems to be saying now that he doesn't know where it fits, but earlier he did call it confessional. Since he went off on tangents after I just let it be. Putting it out there as a category, I don't care if it a "recognized" category, I still think it's misused when paired with impersonal and do not think it applies at all unless the narrative is 1st person.
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Your poem is impersonal, I think. You're giving information about your private life in such a way as if you were an outside observer. I would say it's a confessional poem of sorts, it's certainly not traditional. The confessional has traditionally been "this is me, here is a look inside." and you build a trust between author and reader as if it were a one-sided conversation by text message.

And this conversation about categorization is vacuous, and not meant as anything other than an aid in thinking about alternative methods of criticism.
 
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Trixareforkids said:
My piece is not about me at all. It's completely observational. That the subject is my sister makes it more personal to me, but I could be talking about anyone.

How does that change your critique?

And why bother posting things you call vacuous? I'm curious how the vacuous back and forth bandying is supposed to help aid you or anyone else in critiquing something.
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The attempt at categorization is what is vacuous. What he is saying is he is shifting his view. He is thinking outloud.
There are varied way of looking at a poem, I would post a link here, but I can't find it. The thread probably is called "mushroom of knowledge", it should be there.

Your poem will have problems with audience acceptance. For one, it like bflagsst's are presented as a singular poem. Neither (by self admittance) are, yours is a half of two, his a part of a series.

The list strains the limit, and it is hard for the audience to grasp. Either you keep it that way (it does have an internal logic) or you modify, somehow. I can't speak for
bflagsst, but I suspect he is hinting, as I am.
 
Trixareforkids said:
My piece is not about me at all. It's completely observational. That the subject is my sister makesisit more personal to me, but I could be talking about anyone.

How does that change your critique?

And why bother posting things you call vacuous? I'm curious how the vacuous back and forth bandying is supposed to help aid you or anyone else in critiquing something.
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It wouldn't essentially matter whether the poem was all made up or not. It terms of my criticism I'm going to assume you the author are the one thinking about the girl with the illness. so my recommendation is still that you give us more personal about the girl so we connect with her more and care more about your experience and her experience. That's what I'm going on about with the categories. No one gets away with writing like Ben Jonson anymore. I'm feeling out whether you're hinting at a universal thru personal or something more akin to confessional. I have suggestions each way. 1. Less personal detail more universal experience of loss or 2. More personal detail and less she was just like every other lovely young lady.

I didn't post foehns poem out of the blue. He has a direction toward making a universal statement while keeping the reader involved in a real girl and a real adulation. Whether or not she exists is irrelevant I think.
 
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bflagsst said:
I didn't post foehns poem out of the blue. He has a direction toward making a universal statement while keeping the reader involved in a real girl and a real adulation. Whether or not she exists is irrelevant I think.
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Care to elaborate on anything further on this? Because, right now you are abstracting.
Do you think the insistent, intertwined repetition had a part in this involvement? He is also using the insistent word 'because' and the word 'love' and the subject matter is sympathetic, but avoids the direct statement.
I am very curious as to why you picked foehn's poem when it is so outside what you consider as poetry and did you recogise the structure?
 
twelveoone said:
Care to elaborate on anything further on this? Because, right now you are abstracting.
Do you think the insistent, intertwined repetition had a part in this involvement? He is also using the insistent word 'because' and the word 'love' and the subject matter is sympathetic, but avoids the direct statement.
I am very curious as to why you picked foehn's poem when it is so outside what you consider as poetry and did you recogise the structure?
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Before She and She Loves Them Because/Like Her give these poems qualities that set them at odds with what I see as prose poetry(which I won't deal with right now.) Repetition, but I'd say it's more akin to mantra, more akin to Vedic Hymn in Foehn's case, more akin to being-like an agent for concentration in Trix's case.

The form in both cases is repetition, but Foehn has a prayer for us. I think that's what I'm hung up on, that it's this special prayer and then it's a solid prose poem, there's this weird but entirely logical shift. The poem relies on gerunds, alliteration and repetition for the core of its poetic elements. "The magic word of this mantra is "horse." And then you take 'horses that aren't horses', forms of horses, being more than horses, more than someone who loves horses and it's just too many details to ignore.

We all love {Hanna or a Hanna}
Hanna loves
horses.

Horses

Horses

Horses

Hanna loves
She loves
She loves

they are like her,
like her,
like her.

Hanna loves
the magic word is, "horse".
 
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Trixareforkids said:
A new bone for y'all to chew on.

Dance Lessons

I stand outside the window
admiring the sweep and sway
Even the missteps
make me a touch
envious and nostalgic
as I remember the work I put into
mastering the moves myself

Choose a partner
Take your position
Heads up, don't look down
Now begin
One two three four
Step step back back
Find the rhythm
Feel the beat

I glide step away from the window
down the street in a bird of paradise dance
meant only for myself
All the partners
I've ever had
have long since lost the music
but it's still in me
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First lines are too important to the success of a poem to begin with "I stand outside the window". If you then found another rhyme for 'window' close by it may have been okay, and I understand it's meant to meet up with "glide step away from the window". The poem overall asks for either a heavier rhyme scheme, or else word nimbleness and craftiness if you aren't going to invest in semiotics or more heavily in the idea of symbiotics of dance and relationships. Poem as aesthetic needs the sounds to stand if it's not meant to stand as a symbol-rich text.

Poets often find themselves stuck between making a positive/negative point about the human experience or making a point about themselves as a human and they're stuck because they don't commit to the teaching experience or the catharsis of confession. Yes, as poet you should have the stomach to go all in as teacher or as confessor/one who confesses.

I have a similar problem in this unfinished poem. I was very new as a poet when I wrote it and at the time was dedicated to the form of sound(while the form is a little sloppy) and content was secondary(which there is none, really, as I didn't have anything to say).

We press our faces to the glass,
and breathe upon the frozen frame,
together we can cloud the pane,
and obscure the outside masses,

Isn't it rash for me to presume,
we can veil the past in a brume,
and reveal only the discreet,
to paint our present picture sweet,

Now we press the glass with fingers,
and there linger against the last
of our hopes we wished would surpass
our age, which seems of a different class.
 
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bflagsst said:
First lines are too important to the success of a poem to begin with "I stand outside the window". If you then found another rhyme for 'window' close by it may have been okay, and I understand it's meant to meet up with "glide step away from the window". The poem overall asks for either a heavier rhyme scheme, or else word nimbleness and craftiness if you aren't going to invest in semiotics or more heavily in the idea of symbiotics of dance and relationships. Poem as aesthetic needs the sounds to stand if it's not meant to stand as a symbol-rich text.

Poets often find themselves stuck between making a positive/negative point about the human experience or making a point about themselves as a human and they're stuck because they don't commit to the teaching experience or the catharsis of confession. Yes, as poet you should have the stomach to go all in as teacher or as confessor/one who confesses.

I have a similar problem in this unfinished poem. I was very new as a poet when I wrote it and at the time was dedicated to the form of sound(while the form is a little sloppy) and content was secondary(which there is none, really, as I didn't have anything to say).

We press our faces to the glass,
and breathe upon the frozen frame,
together we can cloud the pane,
and obscure the outside masses,

Isn't it rash for me to presume,
we can veil the past in a brume,
and reveal only the discreet,
to paint our present picture sweet,

Now we press the glass with fingers,
and there linger against the last
of our hopes we wished would surpass
our age, which seems of a different class.
Click to expand...

Both above poems have very imaginative first stanzas and they could be developed in any direction.
Obviously rhyming is not one of Trix's main concerns here but, I think, she develops well her idea in the second stanza and she concludes successfully in the third. To me that is what she wants to say, full stop.

Yours gives me a Dickensian like opening: I thought there were two innocent kids looking just outside the window in a cold winter's night.
You develop it in a different way, so to me, you wanted it to have a content, and though you say that you did not really have anything to say, at least you tried.
I thought that your pictures in the two subsequent stanzas develop strongly and quite well, and though you say it is unfinished to me would be a finished song, but if I was to write a metrical melody for it I would have to make a few changes. Maybe it would affect your meaning not to your liking.
Please don’t say that I'm butchering your poem. If you thing so, at least I can say that I'm not doing it on purpose, I'm only changing the metre a little to make it easier to fit a melody.
I know "brumming" does not exist as a verbal form, but that's why we are here, to invent words sometimes.

We press our faces to the glass,
and breathe upon the frozen frame,
together we can cloud the pane,
obscuring the outside mass.

Isn't it rash for me presuming,
the past is veiled by some brumming,
revealing only the discreet,
to paint our present picture sweet?

Now we press the glass with fingers,
and there the last of our hopes lingers,
hopes we wished they would surpass
our age, which seems of a different class.
 
Thread is averaging twenty-five posts per poem voluntarily submitted.

Poetry being taken way too seriously perhaps?
 
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Magnetron said:
Thread is averaging twenty-five posts per poem voluntarily submitted.

Poetry being taken way too seriously perhaps?
Click to expand...

I could go along with that (easily, I think, but with a sense of loss perhaps).
At any rate, the life each one lives is far more interesting than any single art included in that life. That's where I'm now.
 
bflagsst said:
Before She and She Loves Them Because/Like Her give these poems qualities that set them at odds with what I see as prose poetry(which I won't deal with right now.) Repetition, but I'd say it's more akin to mantra, more akin to Vedic Hymn in Foehn's case, more akin to being-like an agent for concentration in Trix's case.

The form in both cases is repetition, but Foehn has a prayer for us. I think that's what I'm hung up on, that it's this special prayer and then it's a solid prose poem, there's this weird but entirely logical shift. The poem relies on gerunds, alliteration and repetition for the core of its poetic elements. "The magic word of this mantra is "horse." And then you take 'horses that aren't horses', forms of horses, being more than horses, more than someone who loves horses and it's just too many details to ignore.

We all love {Hanna or a Hanna}
Hanna loves
horses.

Horses

Horses

Horses

Hanna loves
She loves
She loves

they are like her,
like her,
like her.

Hanna loves
the magic word is, "horse".
Click to expand...
Reconsider this bflagsst, in groupings of three, a simple mantra is not going to prompt that response from you. He has set up a highly reactive core and diminishing it. But it all points back to Hanna. Hanna by inference is no longer here.
He is leading right to that but never explicitly stating.

I can say that to you, even if it generates a wtf is he talking about from others.

Now the local to the universal thinking, that also needs to be rethought, as unless explicit (which may not be a good idea*) has to be inferred (action on readers part).
Trix's b/s poem the inference is there in the juxtaposition.

*example not provided, as doing so will generate another lame ass poem from the Brahmin.
 
bflagsst said:
I didn't post foehns poem out of the blue. He has a direction toward making a universal statement while keeping the reader involved in a real girl and a real adulation. Whether or not she exists is irrelevant I think.
Click to expand...

Examine this: I bolded direction for a reason.

Most good poems play with the audience, creating illusions of depth and direction , "local to the universal" is one such move.

These same tools can be used in bad poetry, when the writer is either playing to
the audience, explotation, i.e.
How can any man feel comfortable, when some toddler is in the rain?

Playing with is engagement, assuming the audience holds up its part.

I'm telling you bflagsst, every literary tool has deep psychological roots. This does not mean that they work in the same way across the spectrum of individuals in a potential audience.

Nor, is it rational, including in so-called "reasoned arguments".
 
twelveoone said:
Examine this: I bolded direction for a reason.

Most good poems play with the audience, creating illusions of depth and direction , "local to the universal" is one such move.

These same tools can be used in bad poetry, when the writer is either playing to
the audience, explotation, i.e.
How can any man feel comfortable, when some toddler is in the rain?

Playing with is engagement, assuming the audience holds up its part.

I'm telling you bflagsst, every literary tool has deep psychological roots. This does not mean that they work in the same way across the spectrum of individuals in a potential audience.

Nor, is it rational, including in so-called "reasoned arguments".
Click to expand...

Yes, microscope in, telescope out. How do I know there is value in presuming to reveal the underpinnings of an inexplicable poem? I would be playing with the reader of my criticism if I really delved into the notion of Foehn's putting forth Platonic Realism or as seriously attempting an anthropogenic Vedic hymnal.

"Hanna loves horses that aren't horses.
She loves them because of what they want to be.
She loves them because of form:"

"So mustn't a rule-setter also know how to embody in sounds and syllables the name naturally suited to each thing? And if he is to be an authentic giver of names, mustn't he, in making and giving each name, look to what a name itself is? And if different rule-setters do not make each name out of the same syllables, we mustn't forget that different blacksmiths, who are making the same tool for the same type of work, don't all make it out of the same iron. But as long as they give it the same form--even if that form is embodied in different iron--the tool will be correct, whether it is made in Greece or abroad. Isn't that so?" -Cratylus

But the mantra, the repetition: Love is Old, Love is New, Love is Me, Love is You... has a very long history in poetry and song. The poem works because of many things.
 
bflagsst said:
Yes, microscope in, telescope out. How do I know there is value in presuming to reveal the underpinnings of an inexplicable poem? I would be playing with the reader of my criticism if I really delved into the notion of Foehn's putting forth Platonic Realism or as seriously attempting an anthropogenic Vedic hymnal.

"Hanna loves horses that aren't horses.
She loves them because of what they want to be.
She loves them because of form:"

"So mustn't a rule-setter also know how to embody in sounds and syllables the name naturally suited to each thing? And if he is to be an authentic giver of names, mustn't he, in making and giving each name, look to what a name itself is? And if different rule-setters do not make each name out of the same syllables, we mustn't forget that different blacksmiths, who are making the same tool for the same type of work, don't all make it out of the same iron. But as long as they give it the same form--even if that form is embodied in different iron--the tool will be correct, whether it is made in Greece or abroad. Isn't that so?" -Cratylus

But the mantra, the repetition: Love is Old, Love is New, Love is Me, Love is You... has a very long history in poetry and song. The poem works because of many things.
Click to expand...

Ok, and thanks for the quotation. I know you reply to 1201 primarily, but this is a public forum in which I choose to participate.
I don’t remember well that dialogue cause it is as far away as my high school years, so you force me to follow wikipedia again. If you know of any downloadable complete version of "Cratylus", even in English, please post a link.
Going by what little I read here, Socrates' (Plato's really) argument does not carry much weight for me because the essence (knowledge) of the hammer (for me, I repeat) is not really that, although many hammers are made out of different types of iron (in Greece and elsewhere), what really exists and is truthful and beautiful is the immaterial form of a hammer which prevails in all hammers existing, in other words the "universal" idea of a hammer, but the conditions that give it birth which you could term as ""universal" if you decide to take such liberties with language, because different conditions prevail in different times and places for a hammer to be born.
These conditions are always social. They are connected with social evolution and the essence of a hummer is only its usefulness. If a hammer was useless it would not had been invented at all.
That usefulness in my mind is applicable in all societies, but does not constitute a "universal", in the same way that all the real horses of the world do not result in a "universal" horse, in the essence of what a horse really is, which is to be more beautiful and more truthful than all existing real horses.
In other words, simply, I don’t believe in "universals". I don’t say that they cannot exist but simply that human observance has not proved so far that they do exist. So, if I was living in those times I would probably answer to that question: "No, I'm not sure it is so, Socrates".
But the dialogue had to end somewhere and it ended where Plato was satisfied with it.
Forms as applied in arts or sciences and industry are very-very different abstract entities and… sorry, I fail to see their universality or their immateriality.

By the way, I find Plato's idea that the sound of language is secondary and not related to meaning quite correct.

Compare these two (four) words:
English horse: Horse (it)
Greek Horse: Alogho or Ippos (it or he)
English hammer: Hammer (it)
Greek hammer: Sphyra or sphyri. (she or it)
All four (six by now) words have beautiful Sonics in my ear but none of them have any relation to its "essence".

I am not trying to persuade you about anything here cause I see that we belong to different schools of thought, still is good noting the differences.

Edited to add the word "Ippos"
 
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pelegrino said:
Ok, and thanks for the quotation. I know you reply to 1201 primarily, but this is a public forum in which I choose to participate.
I don’t remember well that dialogue cause it is as far away as my high school years, so you force me to follow wikipedia again. If you know of any downloadable complete version of "Cratylus", even in English, please post a link.
Going by what little I read here, Socrates' (Plato's really) argument does not carry much weight for me because the essence (knowledge) of the hammer (for me, I repeat) is not really that, although many hammers are made out of different types of iron (in Greece and elsewhere), what really exists and is truthful and beautiful is the immaterial form of a hammer which prevails in all hammers existing, in other words the "universal" idea of a hammer, but the conditions that give it birth which you could term as ""universal" if you decide to take such liberties with language, because different conditions prevail in different times and places for a hammer to be born.
These conditions are always social. They are connected with social evolution and the essence of a hummer is only its usefulness. If a hammer was useless it would not had been invented at all.
That usefulness in my mind is applicable in all societies, but does not constitute a "universal", in the same way that all the real horses of the world do not result in a "universal" horse, in the essence of what a horse really is, which is to be more beautiful and more truthful than all existing real horses.
In other words, simply, I don’t believe in "universals". I don’t say that they cannot exist but simply that human observance has not proved so far that they do exist. So, if I was living in those times I would probably answer to that question: "No, I'm not sure it is so, Socrates".
But the dialogue had to end somewhere and it ended where Plato was satisfied with it.
Forms as applied in arts or sciences and industry are very-very different abstract entities and… sorry, I fail to see their universality or their immateriality.

By the way, I find Plato's idea that the sound of language is secondary and not related to meaning quite correct.

Compare these two (four) words:
English horse: Horse (it)
Greek Horse: Alogho or Ippos (it or he)
English hammer: Hammer (it)
Greek hammer: Sphyra or sphyri. (she or it)
All four (six by now) words have beautiful Sonics in my ear but none of them have any relation to its "essence".

I am not trying to persuade you about anything here cause I see that we belong to different schools of thought, still is good noting the differences.

Edited to add the word "Ippos"
Click to expand...

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1616

Project Gutenberg has all the full existing works of Henry Constable, Donne, Savage Landor, Robert Herrick, all of Milton's books of poems that weren't Paradise Lost, all the stuff you can't buy on Amazon.

"All names, whether primary or secondary, are intended to show the nature of things; and the secondary, as I conceive, derive their significance from the primary. But then, how do the primary names indicate anything? And let me ask another question,—If we had no faculty of speech, how should we communicate with one another? Should we not use signs, like the deaf and dumb? The elevation of our hands would mean lightness—heaviness would be expressed by letting them drop. The running of any animal would be described by a similar movement of our own frames. The body can only express anything by imitation; and the tongue or mouth can imitate as well as the rest of the body. But this imitation of the tongue or voice is not yet a name, because people may imitate sheep or goats without naming them. What, then, is a name? In the first place, a name is not a musical, or, secondly, a pictorial imitation, but an imitation of that kind which expresses the nature of a thing; and is the invention not of a musician, or of a painter, but of a namer." -Some more Cratylus that I thought fit with Hanna and her poet and her critics.

Writers of prose are the deaf and dumb imitators of the world, poets attempt to express the nature of things.
 
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twelveoone said:
This adds what?
How?
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Is the pleasures of criticism

the joy derived from reading and examining poetry and perhaps helping the writer and or yourself become a better writer?

-or-

is it the joy derived from hearing the sound of one's own voice leading others on a tour through one's own warehouse or museum of labeled, categorized and shelved intellectual property?

Don't get me wrong ..... debate is a great thing ...... but this thread didn't start out as the pleasures of debating.
 
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Magnetron said:
Is the pleasures of criticism

the joy derived from reading and examining poetry and perhaps helping the writer and or yourself become a better writer?

-or-

is it the joy derived from hearing the sound of one's own voice leading others on a tour through one's own warehouse or museum of labeled, categorized and shelved intellectual property?

Don't get me wrong ..... debate is a great thing ...... but this thread didn't start out as the pleasures of debating.
Click to expand...

The title of this thread came from Marcel Proust's short story collection Pleasures and Regrets. Most poets write criticism with regret because they're so self-absorbed(ignorant) that they can't possibly take pleasure in analyzing the poetry of another in a keenly critical fashion. I'm talking about the faux self-modest: "I can't possibly criticize, I can only suggest...but I'm terrible even at that." and it's really just an excuse because most poets don't want to read the poetry of their peers in a way that would matter to the author...in a way that is genuinely critical of the author's choices.

This thread should've been titled: Bflagsst's Pleasures and Jests in Criticism because I knew the jokers would come along and object to their peers receiving the gift of genuine criticism.
 
Yes, the opposition is deafening.

Here is what you asked for. Let's see what genuine criticism you can offer.
 
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