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To Write

I, too, must admit that I really didn’t enjoy any of this weeks reading. However, if I have to choose to discuss them, I chose to discuss Auden’s essay. Like most I picked up on his descriptions of the young “would-be writers.” Personally, I took some offense to this because I am a “writer,” though I will admit that when I was young I wanted to be a lawyer. However, when thinking about law, I realized that there were too many criminals for me to take that path. Therefore, here I am writer, poet and doctoral student. 

I found the discussion of the poetic language to be pretty interesting in Gerard Genette’s essay about the poetics of language. He discussed on page 409, “…if languages were perfect, verse would not exist, because all speech would be poetry and, therefore, there would be no poetry.” It is definitely an interesting image to consider everyone that you meet greeting you in verse. Oh, what a wonderful world that would be. At the same time to think of the world existing without poetry is very frightening because poetry is one of the things that brightens a dull and darkened world. I liked the fact that he comments that the poetic function is to motivate language because it seems that the poetic language is language at its most extreme.

Just thought I would let everyone know what I have been working on for the final. I have been dealing with the idea of music and poetry, more specifically its influences in poetry readings and performance.

Hey guys, I just wanted to post a message here on the blog to let you know that a I am sorry but I won't be able to make it tonight. I'll drop an email as well. Sorry again, I feel bad about it. Hope all goes well. :-)

The Politics of Poetry

DuPlessis

DuPlessis was an interesting read as it traced the idea that social and political constructs are evident within the very language of poetry and an author’s choices of the resources, textual arrangements and various forms of poetry. In addition, the idea of the “new”, emerging forms of modernity with women, African-Americans, and Jewish races, emerging in poetry is one that seems to continue even now. It is interesting to note the evolution that poetry has taken since the days of the romantics, where poetry is one that is transcendent of history to the poetry of today, the poetry of the modernists which incorporates or juxtaposes poetry within history. The poet/author writes with the influences of the social and political constructs of their time and it is so evident in the choices that they make as they are writing, such as line breaks, word usage and their various definitions, and multiple other textual arrangements, resources and forms of poetry...

I have to admit that this was not one of the most interesting articles that I read, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t gleam any insight from its pages. Considering my recent reading of Wordsworth’s The Prelude, I found this next quote to be exactly what he was doing in this poem. McGann states “In a self-conscious constructed book, the romantic sense discloses itself as a rhetorical display: not the dialogue of the mind with itself, but the theatrical presentation of such a dialogue” (21). This could be why his poem was not one of my favorite poems that I read, which almost made me feel guilty since I am a poet but I found it to be long and drawn out, with too many historical references that eluded me. However, Wordsworth does present a “rhetorical display” of what he feels is the transcendence of man, which is poetry and again, it does not appear as a dialogue that the mind was having with itself but rather a “theatrical presentation” of that dialogue.

In the section discussing Emily Dickinson’s poetry, which I enjoy, I found the concept of editorial decisions to be that is particularly interesting and it brings to mind that if scripts are continually changed through editorial decisions, how are we ever to really interpret something without placing it within context as much of education would have us do. The editorial decisions effect how a reader interprets a poem and the reader, not realizing that they are not looking at the original or at the very least a copy of the original, think that for all intent and purposes that they are reading the real thing and interpret it likewise, thereby skewing their interpretation. This section is found on pages 14 and 15. McGann goes on to discuss these decisions later on page 38 when he notes, “In a poetry that has imagined and executed itself as a scriptural rather than a typographical event, all these matters fall under the works initial horizon of finality.” He then points out that Dickinson was not written for print, even though it was a time for print. Therefore, he notes that we are to accommodate our typographical conventions to her work and not the other way around. However, in so doing, are we changing the work in anyway, such as editorial decisions, and thus, are we removing it from the context it was in and does that mean then the reader will never be able to get the true beauty of the work because they will not be seeing the original, or even a copy of the original because the typographical conventions would change the work. At the same time, in a print dominated society, it seems to be necessary to convert script into type in order for it to be read and even mass produced, so really it seems that it is a necessity to have it in print in order for it be read by the masses. This then leads me to believe that it really places more work on the reader to do their “homework” and research in order to contextualize because without this being done we would have never known about Emily Dickinson and her writing practices and would have taken Johnson’s word for the details of her works.

I think that Foucault made sense when he stated “literature crossed a threshold when it began to be read not as a set of works but as a scene of writing.” The attention seemed to be move from the content of the work to the form, though Yeats saw these two things as connected and that they could not be separated. Although, I know that when I write, I find myself paying less attention to the form of my poems and more attention to the content, another words just getting it down and the form seems to arrange itself on its own. Yet, I can see where the type and arrangement of the words provide a sort of visual beauty and can even lend themselves in the interpretation of the poem, thus providing a greater sense of beauty to the poem. Therefore, as Foucault described, we are then left with a “scene of writing.”

It’s the Process of the Thing

Charles Olson – Projective Verse

I have to say that at first glance I liked what Olson had to say about poetry itself, especially the way he divided it up into three parts – Kinetics, Principle, and the Process of the Thing. I liked the idea of “kinetics” in which the poem is energy transferred from where the poet got it…by way of the poet itself to, all the way over to, the reader (289). Thereby meaning that the very poem itself is not really a product, the product is what is left over, but it is a process by which energy flows from the poet to the reader, the poem is merely a conductor for the energy. It really was a good use of figurative language, metaphor, to relate the process of poetry. He moves into principle from this point and again, gives a very unique definition by stating that the principle is the so-called “law” and that from is never more than an extension of content. Finally, we end up at the “process of the thing” which is the “how the principle can be made so to shape the energies that the form is accomplished” (289). He further iterates this concept by stating that one perception must immediately and directly lead to a further perception.

Basically, this is stating then that the content must thus shape the form and this is done by descriptively discussing a perception which then leads the reader to a further perception and thereby, provides for the timelessness of the poem. I think Wordsworth’s poem Daffodils might be an example, though I think for me a poem that does this for me are two poems by Frost, well actually several of Frosts poems but the two that come to mind as we just read them are “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” and “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening.” One final comment that Olson makes that I found to be pertinent to the discussion of poetry is the idea that all elements of the poem (syllable, line, image, sound and sense) must flow and work together to produce the over all energy – kinetics of the poem (292). I think this definitely is the case when discussing poetry as it seems the total energy of the poem can not be boiled down to just one element, it is all the elements working together, the process of the poem rather than just the poem itself. There were a few things that bothered me about Olson’s essay but the thing that bothered me the most is the asides in parentheses that Olson put throughout the essay, they didn’t seem to explain or clarify anything, and they were just an annoyance.

Imamu Amiri Baraka – “Hunting is not Those Heads on the Wall”

Baraka adopts the same idea as Olson in that the emphasis is on the “poem” as a process and not a product, which challenges the “academic Western mind” and its “artifact worship” (385). Academia seems to focus on the so-called “product” that they lose sight of what is important and that is the process, if a person does not understand the process, how, then, can they appreciate the product because we can not have one without the other. He notes that “Thought is more important than art” (386). He also comments that art is a by product of thought and comments that “A museum is a curious graveyard of thinking.” I really liked that quote because after all there has to be a thought before it is worked into a process, which forms a product that evokes the image of the thought that started it all and his calling the museum a graveyard of thought stands for the fact that these are all thoughts that are now gone but their so-called “products” are all that remain for us to visit, they are remnants of former thoughts, “urns” if you will. His argument is that the value of the poem is found by trying to understand the “why” – the process of the poem and notes that the form is the “how,” and the content is the “why” of the poem. He also argues that everything has both of these qualities. They are in essence synthesized within the poem and the poem would not exist without them, which is basically what Olson was saying when he noted that the elements of the poem all need to flow and work together in order to get the total energy out of the poem.

Bernstein – Artifice

I didn’t seem to get as much out of Bernstein and found the format to be somewhat annoying, I realize he was trying to make a point by doing it this way but it really bothered me which made it more difficult for me to read or to gleam anything from. However, with that said, I think his definition of “Artifice” seems to mimic what both Olson and Baraka were saying about the process of the poem. He defines it as a measure of a poem’s intractability to being read as the sum of its devices and subject matters (1). Again, this is the process or the “kinetics” of the poem where all of the elements work together in order to provide the total energy of the poem. I found it interesting when Bernstein discusses the “mark.” He comments “The ‘mark’ is the visible sing of writing. But reading, insofar as it consumes and absorbs the mark, erases it – the words disappear (the transparency effect) & are replaced by that, which they depict, their “meaning” (30). This then means that the reader, upon reading the poem, removes the words by providing their own interpretation or meaning to the poem, what they feel the poem is “saying.” He argues for a work that will empower the reader while at the same time make the reader aware of the dangers of absorption/domination/passivity that is implicit in the process itself. He notes that “Absorption or its many converses, reverses, is at heart a measure of the relationship between a reader & a work: any attempt to isolate this dynamic in terms exclusively of reading or composition will fail on this account” (41). Again, this seems to be finalizing the fact that the poem is a combination of all its elements working together, the process, coming together to produce the total energy of the poem, it is when you try to isolate or deconstruct the elements that the poem seems to fail in its process and purpose, which seems to go against, as Baraka notes, the whole concept or idea of Western Academia which teaches us to deconstruct the poem to find its meaning or rather its universal but the problem there is that sometimes there is not an overall or universal meaning to “decode.”

To be Free, To be Modern, To Be Whoever You Want to Be

It appears that to be a poet today, means discovery, discovery of who you are both as a poet and as an individual. Perloff made some excellent points about “free verse,’ and if I did disagree with some of her writing, I still found it very useful in its explanations. She argues the idea that verse basically came to be known as poetry, calling it language in lines. However, she went on to say that in prose, we expect to read to find out about a subject, where as in poetry, the language forms part of the subject (117). This line stuck out to me for some reason which I suppose is the very idea that in poetry it becomes increasingly difficult to separate a subject and object; the two are synthesized within the poem. This is an aspect of romantic poetry of which most of us are the most familiar; it became inherent in our own poetic discourse if you will, which is another concept that Perloff comments on in her discussion of poetry and free verse. She notes quoting Easthope, that poetry has always had a specific poetic discourse and that line organization {or nonlinear organization} has always attributed a specific historical form, and therefore is ideological (118). Thus meaning, that poetic discourse is part of our historic make-up as a human being and a poet, it is embedded, inherent as part of our poetic tradition and/or experience. She comments, “…we tend to forget that the poet is…inevitably ventriloquized by his or her tradition” (118). She goes on to note that what is true for the poet, that he is at one with the natural world, is true in general (122). Wordsworth’s idea that the poetic language should be that of the everyman is in essence what the romantic era of poetry was all about and what Randall says continues in the modernist era, but is a bit later in the posting.

For now, Tsur and What Makes Sound Patterns Expressive, was somewhat hard to follow for me, more than likely because it involves science, it wasn’t that I didn’t understand where he was coming from or what he was trying to say in sound making meaning but there were certain parts that left me wanting more of an explanation, such as a “Sound Patterns for Dummies” version. Tsur comments that various language sounds have certain general potentialities of meaningful impression and can be combined with other elements so that they impress the reader as if they expressed some specific meaning (1). I took this to mean that when you combine the various language sounds, for example with an exclamation point (punctuation) that changes the meaning and/or provides more of a meaning for the reader. For example, if I just wrote the word look without any punctuation, it doesn’t mean the same thing as if I wrote the word LOOK! with an exclamation point and capitalized all four letters of the word, that implies that I am saying the word with more emotion and emphasis, as if I am giving a direct order or as if I am yelling it out. It is also a possibility then for us to ascribe rhythm to words influenced by our apprehension of their meanings (4). This, then, implying that our understanding of the meaning of words influences the sound that we apply to them, and it also then gives way to the understanding that there can be a so-called “double-edgedness,” of the sounds where as in one poem a word might have a softer connotation, than in another poem it might appear more aggressive in its undertaking. Finally, Tsur brings in the concept of nature and comments on the fact that language cannot give an exact imitation of the noises of nature, which we discussed when examining onomatopoeia (18). This also brings us back to the discussion of the exclamation point and that in most cultures it is the speakers “pathetic fallacy” or attempt to bestow his/her feelings on surrounding nature (19). It brought to mind for me the idea of cultural differences in language, now I know that the idea of the language of the everyman in romantic poetry is so that all can enjoy poetry, everyone can reach this universal truth through poetry, this beauty of nature. However, it seems that I could possibly be limiting in its efforts, especially when considering cultural differences in languages, and even in translations of languages.

I think I found Jarrell’s essay to be one of the more enlightening essays in his comparison of romanticism and modernism. I particularly liked this quote, “The change from romantic poetry was evolutionary, not revolutionary; the modernists were a universe away from the great-grandfathers they admired; they were their fathers, only more so” (269). This gave way, for me, to Elliot’s idea that the past is forever present within the modern poet that it is in their historical poetic make-up, which also goes back to Perloff. Basically, stating that as much as we try to part or change from the past, it is part of our evolution, our very basis or starting point to move from or rather build upon. Really, the evolution of the poet has been evident since the time of Plato and his writing “The Republic,” and perhaps even before then. Modernism, then, as an extension of romanticism seems to be very clear when looking through the eyes of Randall and in fact, I could see some of those very qualities clearly in my own poetics but I would have to say that I am more of an hodge podge of poetics and poetic discourse, than of any one frame. However, I do like the evolutionary, rather then revolutionary quality that he applies to poetry, though I argue that in its evolution, isn’t it at the same time revolutionary because if not, would anything ever evolve or change, including poetry, without something to evoke it.

Figuratively Speaking

I have to admit that I really enjoyed McLaughlin’s article on figurative language and it opened my eyes to a lot of things. I have studied figurative language before, obviously, as I am now in the doctorate program but it seemed to bring to light a lot of new information or rather ways that I hadn’t looked at things before reading this article. I found it interesting to think of the language as shaping the poem, which come to think of it was something I had known all along but hadn’t placed it in those terms. I always used to tell people that my brother would draw pictures and I created them with words. McLauglin notes this idea again on page 82.

I also had never thought of figurative language being used in everyday speech but that is because as McLauglin noted, that figures occur so frequently that the process of interpreting them is an unconscious working (81). My question was, “where does that place the use of exaggeration?” Would it be considered a use of figurative language? I was kind of on the fence on this one, on one hand I could say yes but on the other hand no because it really is just an overstatement, not really a use of metaphor, etc.

I appreciated McLauglin taking us down the line and stating and providing the definition for some of the terms in figurative language, which helped me to understand each of them a little better, rather then reading them in a poetic language book.

Another idea that helped me, really, to understand Free Verse a little better, was the idea that within the poem, the literal is used to describe or explain the use of the figurative, or rather the creation of the figurative (84). Also, the fact that a word has its own figurative history, which helps tremendously when trying to interpret or read a poem, which I suppose also has a lot to do with the readers own individual understanding of a term. I might understand one meaning of a word because that is all I knew of but you might have another understanding of a word, which would cause each of us to interpret the poem differently based on our understandings of the language used.

Finally, I thought that McLauglin was poetic in his own right when he discussed our use of language as a way of both shaping and seeing the world, along with the fact that our meanings of language have nothing to do with naming different things but comes from an agreement with other speakers of the language, which basically means that we look at a chair and we agree that it is something to sit on, so that is what a chair means. This is the best part about figurative language is that it leaves language open to play with, there are no set definitions, nothing concrete, which is the beauty of poetry, its openness to interpretation.

One last thing, in Forrest-Thompson’s essay, she notes that free verse makes us aware of the poetry in our prose as we are aware of the continuity and discontinuity in poetry (460). This essay basically complimented what McLaughlin was commenting on, only used language differently to express it. This was another poetic way of looking at language in more ways than one. Basically saying that poetry is evident in all language if you no where to look and how to look at it.

Easthope, if nothing else continues to instruct me on the means of poetry, though I must admit I was not happy to be dealing with meter again, but hey, it is poetry and though I find myself immersed in free verse, I realize that poetry does have meter and all poetry has form.

I enjoyed Easthope’s explanation of intonation, especially when he notes: Intonation marks the spoken difference between a poetic inquiry about the evening menu and a recommendation of cannibalism (57). I found this somewhat amusing but at the same time it made great sense because it is all in how you say it, or to put it more logically, it is all in where you put the stresses. Easthope defines intonation as relative degrees of stress in an utterance as it would occur outside a metrical context, which basically means spoken conversation (58). I suppose spoken conversation at times could be metrical but more often than not, I don’t think that it does.

I will probably come back to intonation at a later point but I wanted to bring up another area of interest to me. Easthope notes that pentameter is a ‘pattern perceived’ and that it is culturally explicit and institutionalized (59). I took this to mean that the pattern is perceived by the reader or in this case speaker, and that it is not exactly fixed because it varies from culture to culture and it becomes institutionalized within that culture. For example, the pentameter is different in Italian poetic culture that it is in English, or in Chinese, which Easthope himself point out.

The fact that pentameter is changed depending on how the poem is read or spoken due to the voice, whether it is abstract or it is intonation (64). It reminded me of an early point that Easthope made in part one of our readings, which commented that the meaning of the poem changes with each reading. This also coincides with Easthope’s explanation that pentameter is a mechanism by which the poem aims to deny its production as a poem (67). If the pentameter changes with each reading or speaking of a poem, and the meaning changes with each reading, than it would seem that the fact that it is a poem would be hidden. I know that we only had to read to chapter four but I went ahead and read five and this very description of the pentameter is seen in the ballad. I actually found five a little more interesting than four but I won’t go into specific details about this chapter since it wasn’t required for this week, other than to say what interested me the most was the fact that it provided an example of medieval poetry, “Three Ravens.” The gist of it is that the poem is read more like a story than a poem, which again is dependent on the reading or speaking of the poem.

This idea of “proper speech” has reared its head again (69). I found this an interesting notion in light of our readings from last week, specifically Lowell. Based on this reading, I think I was able to understand her point about the way that poetry is read, well, the good and bad ways that poetry is read.

I was particularly interested in the idea of the speaker in association with the pentameter. Easthope notes, iambic pentameter would disclaim the voice speaking the poem in favor of the voice represented in the poem, speaking what it says (74). In other words, the poem would be speaking for itself; the reader’s voice would not be heard. This then allows for the reader to identify with a singular voice, the voice of the poem. I hate to refer again to chapter five but Easthope notes that this is exactly what the ballad does; it lets the poem speak for itself using events and dialogue without going into generalizations and explanations (85). I can’t tell you poems that I have read where instead of telling the story, they explain it to you. Let the story speak first, and then explain if it is required which is the same as saying let the poem speak for itself.

One last comment, final comment, is that I liked Easthope including Eliot’s description of what free verse is, “Eliot wrote in 1942: ‘only a bad poet would welcome free verse as liberation from fort. It was a revolt against dead form, and a preparation for new form.” (76) Free verse is in and of itself, its own form and as Eliot noted a good poet would recognize this fact.

I just want apologize ahead of time for any typos, I just got this posting done before class and did not have any real time to proof it over. Hope it makes some sense. :-)

It’s all in the Reading -

The very idea that poetry expresses experience; experience gives access to personality, and so poetry leads us to personality (Easthope 5) is one that is not all that farfetched because whether it is the experience of the poet or the reader while reading the poetry or whether it is the personality of the poet or the reader as he is reading, at once upon either reflecting and writing the poem or reading the poem and thinking about its form and content, we have arrived at personality which basically is a set of attitudes, beliefs and ideas that exist within both the poet and the reader. This is a broad definition I know but it is one that when everything is said an done, which brings out for each reader the meaning of the poem, which in essence may be completely different than what the original author had intended and when I say original author, I mean the one who actually wrote down the poem.

This then also brings to mind from Easthope the fact that criticism and discourse should be directed at the poem rather than the poet (5) because in all actuality, if the reader is who brings meaning to the poem and if that meaning is different with each reading and reader, than how can the criticism be directed at the poet who really has nothing to do with the meaning that is evoked by the poem because it is different than the poet’s actual intended meaning. I hope that is clear because after writing it I am wondering what it is that I just said. Basically what I am saying is, that the poet (one who wrote the actual poem) has his or her own intended meaning when writing the poem but that meaning gets put aside when the reader begins reading the poem because each reader has their own unique personality and experiences that they bring with them when reading, and accordingly I know that upon reading a poem a second and third time that I gain or gleam something new which therefore changes the original meaning I had to begin with, which brings me back to my question, how, then based on this, can we criticize the poet, but rather as Easthope noted, we should criticize the poem instead.
Easthope further iterates this point by stating, “The meaning of a text is always produced in a process of reading.” (7) Therefore, meaning can not be deduced in any other way than by reading a text first, what Easthope failed to note was whether that was through both an oral reading and reading in general or if it was one or the other because a little before that he noted on page 7, the meaning of a poem is attached to sounds.

However, he also discusses the fact that poetry was not intended to give information in the sense that a text book might be used to give information. I tend to agree with this to an extent, however, poetry and really all literature in some way, shape or form does provide for its reader or listener information, whether it is valuable information or not. I completely understand the laundry list argument, but if it was Shakespeare’s laundry list, I can’t help but think it might have been in verse and if so, if it were to be read silently or aloud, it very well could be considered literature. I am only jesting at this point. Although, Easthope’s main point for bringing this up, I think, is to give credit to himself because he states, “On this basis, the study of poetry can give knowledge of poetry by referring to it accurately.” (17) Meaning that only true criticism and discourse of poetry is able to give knowledge of poetry. Therefore, “Discourse has to be seen as ideological not simply because it is a historical product but because it is one which continues to ‘produce’ the reader who produces it through a reading in the present.” (24) In essence, discourse, then, produces readers as much as readers produce discourse. Readers who read the criticism and discourse of poetry are more likely to read the poetry itself, and thereby, produce more discourse on poetry. I think I summed it up but then again, I have been known to be wrong a time or two.

All in all, Easthope sums it up better when he states “So however much a poem claims to be the property of the speaker represented in it, the poem finally belongs to the reader producing it in a reading.” Thus, re-stated, it is all in the reading of the poem and the poem itself, thereby, leaving the poet fading into the background.

Lowell, I think would agree that it is all in the reading, though she would insist it is more in the oral reading, then the actual silent reading of the poem. The idea that there is a certain way to read poetry that many have not picked up on is one that rings true. I know that I, more than likely, do not always read a poem the way it was truly intended to be read and more than likely am guilty of over dramatizing a poem. However, at the same time, if the reader as Easthope claims, takes possession of the poem upon a reading, than can it really be read wrong as Lowell states on pages 71-73. Yet I agree that poetry most often is meant to be heard and not read silently to one ’s self but I do not think it is all poetry because some poems are just better read silently by one’s self than read aloud for the ear to hear.

Finally, the poems, Duncan’s poem to me, and perhaps it is because I read this first, to be relying upon some of Easthope’s claims of the reader, especially in the first so-called stanza of the poem where it states, “Neither our vices nor our virtues further the poem. / ‘They came up / and died / just like they do every year / on the rocks.’ ” I think meaning (again I am the reader this time through) that as poets our own personalities or vices and virtues have nothing to do with the poem but it is the readers own vices and virtues that interact with the poem in a sense thus deduce meaning from it. The poem also talks about an inner persistence, which to me is an internalizing of the poem and this is what a reader will do in order to make sense of what he or she had just read, or in this case “a call we heard and answer.”

Zukofsky’s “Mantis” I have not had as much time to spend with it, as I would have liked to do but just for my own personal opinion, I find that I liked “Ferry” better but then again I do have an insect phobia which is taking Mantis at its literal meaning. I hope to gleam knew meaning for this poem from class discussion as of now, at this moment I am not sure exactly what to think about it. Just upon quick glance I would say that it has a lot to do with industrialization removing nature from the scene in that the Mantis is dying upon the stone with no leaves to save it.

Response to September 21 Readings: Brook’s Well Wrought Urn and Leavis’ New Bearings in Poetry - All and None: Timelessness and the Whole Poem

The very idea of transcendence and the concept of being are extraordinarily interesting, especially considering the statement made by Yeats, which Brooks undoubtedly quotes in The Well Wrought Urn: “Man can embody truth but he cannot know truth.” (Brooks 190). I am guessing here that he is saying that all men have truth somewhere deep inside of them but it is when they are the very presence of the truth that they can not or will not see it or chose to recognize its validity and comprehend its honesty. It is Plato’s very “Allegory of the Cave,” which is stated in Plato’s The Republic, and the idea that some chose not to transcend into the world of knowing because they are content or do not know any better, in the shadow world of the cave. So, therefore, when a poem, which definitely contains truth, is presented in front of him, he will not see it or recognize it as there due to the “shadows” or imitations of what he thinks he knows. This, then, becomes representative of Leavis’ notion that poetry is shaped or rather shadowed by the preconceived notions of it at the time and in which case the reader will not recognize the truth nor will the inexperienced poet due to the critical dominance present in present day society.
In addition to this, Brook’s thought on the fact that any statement that we can derive from a poem is nothing without the context of the whole poem, is very central to determining what is that a reader feels the poem is trying to convey. (191) He again reiterates this notion on page 194 when he states, “…we must draw a sharp distinction between the attractiveness or beauty of any particular item taken as such and the “beauty” of the poem considered as a whole.” Basically saying that we need to look at singular items, such as the rose, but we need to consider their beauty within the context of the beauty of the whole poem. Where is the rose in relation to other items in the poem and how when combined with these other items does it relate to the beauty that is the poem itself? Is in the language describing the rose, etc? In essence, the beauty of the poem lies within its very “being”, rather in so much as one particular item because as Brook’s points out, “Unless one asserts the primacy of the pattern, a poem becomes merely a bouquet of intrinsically beautiful items.” (Brooks 194).
This notion then brings us to, as what Brooks calls, the “heresy of paraphrase.” He notes that “To refer the structure of the poem to what is finally a paraphrase of the poem is to refer it to something outside of the poem.” (Brooks 201). He furthers this by commenting that this is where the dangers in criticism lie. It is completely understandable to see that this is true just based on research and critical essays that have been completed but at the same time, as Brooks also notes, it at times is necessary to paraphrase but that it needs to be done within context, that is looking at the whole of the poem and not taken for the meaning of the whole poem in and of itself. I completely agree that if we continue down the path of the “heresy of paraphrase” we will most definitely be doing more harm and violence to the internal order of the poem itself.
Therefore, as Brook’s refers back to Eliot in his work, when considering that the proposition that “Beauty is truth, truth beauty” is given its precise meaning and significance by its relation to the total context of the poem. He iterates that the truth is the apparent irrelevancies which metrical pattern and metaphor introduce do become relevant when realized that they function in a good poem to modify, qualify and develop the total attitude which we are to take in coming to terms with the total situation (209). This then is bringing, us, as readers into the poem and experiencing the poem with the poet. The poem, itself, is the experience. Brook’s notes on pages 212-213 that the poet must unify experience, he must return “us” to the unity of the experience itself as man knows it in his own experience. Thereby, he is bringing the reader into the experience of the poem but at the same time, the reader must have some knowledge of the experience, hence contextualizing the whole of the poem.
In all actuality then, if the reader is taking part in the experience with the poet, it exerts a sense of timelessness or immortality or immemorialization of the poem and the poetic experience. Of course, no one better in Leavis’ eyes exemplifies this immemorial quality than T.S. Eliot. I was particularly interested in the idea that he personified the notion that “the point at which the growth of the mind shows itself,” which again brings in the notion of transcendence from the natural to the supernatural, which Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” considers to be the stage of enlightenment or rather knowing. However, this is more than an outward knowing, it is an inward knowing, a spiritual awakening where man is able to think critically for himself without being told what to think. This then is where I think that Levis is coming from when he states that if poetry and the intelligence of the age lose touch with each other, poetry will cease to matter much (195). It is this whole idea of knowing and more than knowing, experiencing for yourself and thereby knowing and thus the requirements that Leavis places on the poet and poetry is not all that far fetched when he notes, “All that we can fairly ask of the poet is that he shall show himself to have been fully alive in our time. The evidence will be in the very texture of his poetry” (Leavis 197). This also, then, brings in the merging of the past with the present. The idea that historical imagination makes that past contemporary goes along with this notion that the poets of the present, as Eliot pointed out, must have an awareness of the past before being able to write effectively in present day or contemporary time. These past texts became a part of the very fiber of our being and to not be aware that they are there is to not fully understand the poet. Of course, this not saying that we have to write as Eliot did or take on Shakespeare as though we were him, but to simply be aware of their works and the ways that they worked when considering what will work in our own writing. Thus, this concept is more of an inward awareness than an outward awareness or appearance of such history. Therefore, then, the poem becomes the “urn” of immemorializaiton and immortality.
Finally, Eliot’s inclusive consciousness I can only assume meant a merging of the critical with the poetry, the past with the present and the reader with the poem. The consciousness, then I guess, must mean being aware of all of these things upon both the reading and writing of poetry. After all, this is why Leavis considers Eliot one of the better modernist poets because he is both critic and poet and both his criticism and poetry, reinforce each other.

Somewhere between monument and existence -
In following the order of my reading, I am first going to comment on The Well Wrought Urn in the terms of poetic discourse. It is evident that the “urn” does indeed serve as a preservation of history or rather I should say that the “urn”, the poem,” historicizes, canonizes, and immortalizes history along with its subjects and or objects (18). While, at the same time, to take a step back for a minute, the poet conveys this through a use of paradox, either admittedly or through some subconscious effort on his part. It is interesting that it is mentioned that paradoxes spring forth from the very nature of the poet and that the poet essentially makes up his language as he goes (9). Accordingly, while scientists have a more fixed application to their language which stabilizes terms and freezes them into strict denotations; the language of poetry is more disruptive, in that the poet has no one term that he works with but he works by contradiction and qualification using analogies and metaphors, even if they do not always neatly fit edge to edge but overlap on occasion, which of courses forces the poet into paradoxes by the very nature of his “instrument.” I, then, was taking this to mean that there is beauty in the contradictions and that there is passion behind reason and reason behind passion. After all, how can we know something is beautiful if we do not have something that isn’t beautiful to compare it or rather contrast it to in the first place? The same goes for reason and passion, we can not be passionate about something without reasoning why we should be and we can not reason without passion behind it first to give us cause to do so. I do think I could imagine if a scientist walked around speaking in metaphor and paradoxes, and thankfully for the advancement of medicine, they don’t, or else we might all really be in trouble. The imagination in and of itself is a series of paradoxes, so while science deals in concrete fact poetry relies itself on the contrasts that exists in everything.
So, in asking what does the poem communicate, if indeed, it communicates anything? “The poem communicates so much and communicates it so richly and with such delicate qualifications that the thing communicated is mauled and distorted if we attempt to convey it by any vehicle less subtle that that of the poem itself.” (73). I think too often we try to dissect it or bring it out into another medium or vehicle and we loose the very foundation of the poem itself. Poetry should be read as poetry, plain and simple, and even as I say that I more than realize, most anything is never plain and simple. I do agree, as well, that too often we are forcing the burden of proof upon the poet to convey comprehension but that the burden of proof should indeed fall upon the reader because the reader may or may not get more out of the poem that was originally intended and in the poetic world, I think that just might be a good thing.
The reader must be on alert for shifts of tone, for ironic statement, for suggestion rather than direct statement. He must be prepared to accept a method of indirection. He is further expected to be reasonably well acquainted with general tradition – literally, political, philosophical, for he is reading a poet who comes at the end of a long tradition and who can hardly be expected to write honestly and with full integrity and yet ignore this fact. (76)
Now, of course, this isn’t always easy for a reader to do, especially with the use of the poetic methods of symbolism, metaphor, and suggestion rather than plainly stating the facts and nothing but the facts ma’m, but if poetry were to do that so that it communicated more clearly what it was trying to say, it would loose all of its beauty and most certainly the beauty of the language.
I suppose that is where the truth lies as the “urn” or the poem as historian tells tales and does not convey formal history, along with evoking thought about the history that is being portrayed, it asks its readers to think about what is being told them, to reason it in their minds and dare I even say it, question it, ponder it, and discover the truth. I think that was what Keats meant when he said that “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.” I also found it interesting that time, in essence, fosters the “urn” much like it does history and that in and of itself, the “urn” defies time and is, in fact, deathless (157-158). It will live on for other generations, so that they too make gaze up the “urn” and ponder their essence of “being” and view what others before them have viewed of the world, taking it into themselves, there by defining or redefining their own view of the present day.
This somewhat follows along with Elliot’s ideas of tradition and contemporary poetry. He comments that poetry is more than the efforts of one individual but that it is a whole combination of cultural efforts. He goes on to say that this is done by overcoming the historical remoteness of dead writers by making their work live in the present, and this is not done by imitating the writers but by being aware of them in present day writing. They will most certainly influence a work in some way, through some thought or idea, but that is not the same as imitating them. I think that no matter where we stand, that the writer’s of the past most certainly live in the creation of other works and in their comparison to other works. As Elliot points out and rightly so, the new creation’s greatest test is when it is compared to the works of the past to see where it fits within the scheme of things. I particularly liked the idea that a conscious present contains an awareness of past, because the past is how we learn in order to better deal with the present and future. I had to laugh to myself when he commented on another’s comment about the ways in which dead writers are so remote from us because we know so much more than they did and he states that is because of the dead writers. Elliot’s belief that the poet must continually self-sacrifice and put an end to personality in the writing at first really bothered me because I don’t feel that a poet can separate himself or herself for their work but then upon further or rather “closer” reading I realized that there is a continual self-sacrifice that does not completely remove the poet’s personality from the writing but rather remains along the undercurrents of the poem in order for the true essence of the poem to come out.
Heidegger’s focus on language was something that I found interesting, as he comments that symbol is a sign of recognition that demonstrates and thereby legitimizes a belonging together (248). It is a merging of something sensuous to something non-sensuous and that symbol in and of itself is symbolic. The sensuous, of course, being the physical realm and the non-sensuous being the spiritual realm. His opinion that art is created for the spirit’s sake, I found to be a beautiful statement on merit alone. The understanding that the superior and true are what is sensuously represented in the symbolic image relies on the fact that only with enlightened knowledge can one comprehend the true meaning of being and therefore the statement quoted in the Well Wrought Urn, that “A poem should not mean / But be,” is that meaning is not in the poem but in its being, its existence. Thus, when Heidegger discusses the fact that language is the master of man and that language speaks and man responds to its appeal, this is the element of poetry. Its all in the language and the beauty and appeal of it. So again when Elliot states that “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” I can’t help but think he was discussing the language of poetry.

I have to apologize, I first posted this as a response to Whitney's posting, sorry about that. I am reposting it here for everyone to read.

To Err is Human, To Poet Divine…

I first must apologize for the last minute posting of my response, as I have been having some internet troubles at home as of late and at last, am only able to use the labs on campus for the time being. Not to worry though, as I hope to have my internet up and running come the weekend.
Now onwards to my response, which I’ll admit may seem somewhat scattered as I try to formulate and organize my thoughts on screen. I have been writing, especially poetry; since the age of 13 and I have to say that I would basically call myself one of the dreaded or not so dreaded “free verse” poets. I have my difficulties counting on the meters or syllables, etc. and sometimes will say that I am the poet with out rhythm, which one might think of an atrocity, much to the same effects of a blues singer without rhythm.