Poetry -- 0. The wider context of my goal. My goal. The goal of my goal.

[Senna Jawa]

My goal for this series of Poetry 0, Poetry 1, ... posts is to delineate the scope of poetry, and to write about the objective aspects of poetry. The goal of my goal is to help poets to write good poems (and to avoid writing the bad ones). But only through an exposition of the objective aspects (I'll give an idea of what I mean by "objective" below by mentioning what is not objective).

Now I'll provide a wider context, so we will know what we will miss. I will not adress in the next postings the subjective aspects, related more to the poet than to the poem. Let me do a little of it here.

• Look, listen, touch, smell, move things. Look for details, from up close. Know the words which describe the experience (find them in a dictionary, if you have to).
• Write about things about which you know well.
• Write about specific things about which you care.
• Be outdoors a lot.
• Listen a lot to music.
• Read some poetry. A poet doesn't have to read a lot (but it certainly helps too). Your reading should be quality reading. Try to read the best. Check all unknown words, literary and mithological and historical allusions/references, geographic places... in dictionaries and encyclopedias. Think analytically (for this you need an analytical apparatus first). Read critical essays about particular poems.
• Always be ready to write, to jot, whatever comes to your mind! Have a small notebook and a pen/pencil ready with you all the time (or a notebook computer); especially, when you are outdoors; also next to your bed, to your pillow.
• Write a lot of exercise poems. Write several, very different variations of the same poem, e.g. a rhymed version versus free verse, quiet versus dynamic, short lines versus long. Rewrite a poem to have a lot of alliteration in the new version. Etc.
• Try to write a bit when you happen to be a bit tired or drunk or similar.
• Write some poems real fast, improvise without stopping for a single moment to reflect or whatever. You may do it at the end of email letters, before you say: regards or similar.
• Live with poetry in every possible way: think, talk, discuss, write, collect phrases (and rhymes, alliterations,...) to be used later...
• Observe, be preoccupied with the outer world and not with your boring inner world, don't force readers into your uninteresting self. When you write about yourself, treat yourself externally, just like any other object, like a car, a tree, a dog (and I don't mean getting inside the dog--there is enough to see from outside)
• Write a lot, if you can, don't be serious about yourself, but even when joking, treat your writing ALWAYS seriously, make no excuse for writing cheaply, always aim at art, at high quality, be it a miniature or a longer piece, always.
• When writing for an occasion, make sure that your poem transcends the occasion, that it will be understood and making sense a year and five years later too. it is ok when your motivation is not anything serious or important. But the poem should. (This point is a special instance of the previous one).

I am getting somewhat close to objective issues too. So I'll stop now. And I will not address the subjective issues, as understood above, in the next postings of this series (in Poetry 1, 2 etc. (I may add more in this thread. Oh, yes, I'd like to provide some illustrations).

There are certain issues, like historical, which I will have to touch upon, but I will not stress them. It's beyond my goal, and I am not knowlegdeable about them. In particular, I will not write about different poetic schools, or about fleeting views, which are not basic, when they do not transcend time. I will also omit topics like different forms and different metric standards. I'll concentrate on what is at the core of poetry, on what does not change when we cross borders in time and space and between different languages.

So much for now.

In Poetry 1 I'll outline the scope of poetry.

Regards,

 

[Senna Jawa]

translations

It's good for a poet to know more than one language, especially languages belonging to different families. If you don't have any second language then at least read about languages. This gives one the feel for the distance between a language and reality.

And when you do know more than one then translate poetry--there is hardly a better poetic exercise. It is more natural to translate from your second language into your mother tongue. To translate well you need a master control over the target language. The knowledge of the source language does not have to be to the same standard. For the purpose of an exercise you may also translate into your weaker language. You may also write poems in every language which you know. Translations require a better grasp of the target language than writing original poems in that same (target) language.

When you don't know another language you may still do occasional translations, when a literal translation is already provided, and perhaps a few translations already exist. You may use all of them to create your own. Such an activity makes sense only when you have your own idea about that poem and how it should sound in your language. You don't just translate (a word after a word, a phrase after a phrase).

To translate well one must understand not only the words and phrases of the original poem but also its interpretations, its symbolism, etc. This statement is not as obvious as it looks. It may even lead to a trap, when not understood properly. The only reason for a deep understanding, when translating, is the difference between the languages. Otherwise the best thing would be to translate the poem faithfully, without thinking even. But languages do differ and most of the time there is no such thing as a direct translation. This creates many imperfect possibilities for the translator. And one of the goals of the translation is to preserve the interpretations and the symbolism.

I mentioned a trap. Sometimes a translator is so happy and proud of his or her understanding of the poem that instead of translating from one language to another, such a translator also translates from poetry into talk-talk, s/he explains in the translated version what the poem is about. That's why we say that translators are often traitors.

The situation is not that different when you write your own original poem. Often you are a traitor of yourself.

Earlier I encouraged poets to write two or more variations of the same poem. It is similar to translating (e.g. from free form into a strict form or vice versa).

 

[Mythos50]

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