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I can't believe we are at the last post of the semester. Where does the time go? I too have a few comments on Auden, including having a good, if astonished, laugh at the introduction. I'm quite sure that no one writes for money. That's why young people become rappers and clothing designers. To be a writer is a relatively obscure and low paying profession, and if anybody's falling back on something, it might be writers falling back on teaching, but that doesn't pay very well either. That's my essay for another class, though.

Following suit, I also liked the Enzensberger article best. I like linquistics, but Kristeva just went over my head this week. I think E made several good points in his article, and that satire is a great way of doing so. It's interesting that poetry is considered dangerous, but for two opposing reasons. "The apparent conflict which it manifests, displays in reality only the two sides of one and the same coin. Both choruses are agreed at any rate that poems, like other art practices, are something extremely dangerous, whether they disrupt the system or maintain it; hence their excited manner" (449). I don't know what they're getting so excited about, though, considering most people only read poetry when they have to and don't enjoy it anyway.

I also had that initial "what are you talking about?" reaction to the opening of Hughes' article. It wasn't until "for no great poet has ever been afraid of being himself" (139-140)that I got where he was going with it. I had to stop and think for a moment about 1926, the date of the piece. We have a much different perspective and culture than he did. Now, white people are buying black art (think hip-hop and rap especially) by the truckload, and it's not unusual to hear "I want to be a rapper - not a white rapper." Times do change, although I feel his statement that if people like it, that's good, if they don't, it doesn't matter is still completely applicable.

Just gathering some of your thoughts here. James, Marlena and I discussed last week doing some workshopping of our papers sometime in the next week or so. This would give us all a chance to bounce around ideas and get other's opinions.

Not sure what everyone else is doing, but my project has a creative component, in that I'm writing several poems of my own, and then writing a more critical type paper about them using some of the articles (such as Eavan Boland's "The Woman Poet: Her Dilemna", Philip Larkin's "The Pleasure Principle and Writing Poems" and a few others) to discuss voice, what is poetic subject matter, how these work inside my poems, whether they are written with a new view to the audience remaking them (they are), humor in them, blah blah blah.

So I know workshopping for me would be very helpful, especially in the poems part of it. If anybody else wants to workshop some of their poems, whether for this class or just for fun, that would be great too. I think this would also be helpful for the more scholarly aspects of these papers as well. So if anybody's interested, let's figure out when and where before/after class or during break.

I'm still trying to decide if Bernstein's article was more or less understandable having been written in verse. Actually though, I get the impression it was written mostly as prose and then broken into lines. Either way, I read most of it as though reading prose. What stuck out to me, however, was the rather poetic writing of the last 20 or so pages where he is talking about poetry as an escape-
"...an image of release from captivity
in a culture that produces satisfaction as a means
of exploitation or pacification. The problem
with 'escapist' literature is that it offers no escape,
narratively reinforcing our captivity." (75)
He goes on:
"We never leave reality but neither do we ever
exhaust it." (76)
I've always thought that literature in general and poetry in particular, have the ability to heighten reality in such a way as to make the closer examination of it seem almost an escape from it. It forces us to view/see/examine little moments in our "realities" in such a way that they seem much more. I'm having trouble finding the word I'm looking for, as surreal doesn't quite cut it, and it isn't exactly an escape. It's a way of transforming those "realities" into their own escape, little parcels of time that seem to take us out of all the rest of the crap by making something seem more real than real. You'd think with as many words as there are in the English language, it wouldn't be so hard to make translate that thought into words. Sheesh. Hopefully you get what I'm saying.

But anyway, on to something a little less "out there"...

What I liked in Olson's article was how he relates the mind's making of poetry to playing with language. "It is true, what the master says he picked up from Confusion: all the thots men are capable of can lie entered on the back of a postage stamp. So, is it not the PLAY of a mind we are after, is not that that shows whether a mind is there at all?" (291). One of the things that breaks my writer's block is the idea that "there are no new stories to tell, just new voices to tell them in." He seems to be echoing that here.

I agree with Baraka that process is very important in the creation of art, and that we sometimes get too caught up in the final product. Or that rather, we don't always understand/appreciate what came before, that not everything is stamped out by a machine, and that that is part of its value. While Baraka can get a little soapboxy (and yes I do reserve the right to make up new words), he does make several valid points about the existence of object vs. the existence of the "unconnected zoom" that leads to the object. I don't know if it's more that we worship artifacts since the Renaissance, or that since then "things" have been easier to come by, so much so that instant gratification is seen as the norm, and perhaps we no longer hold a clear conception of the fact that "things" do actually come from somewhere, that they are actually created through a process, and are not just sitting around waiting for us to want them.

While reading Tsur's article was a little...trudging...at times, I do think he made some interesting points about language and poetry. What I yanked out of it is the idea that certain phonetic sounds can carry the meaning of a word in a poem farther than its lexical meaning. The idea that we process different types of sounds differently, in speech and non-speech modes and that these overlap in "poetic mode" (although I'd like to see some brain scans to show that one), lends another level (color?) to how we interpret and enjoy poetry, perhaps in a way we are mostly unconcious of. After all, our brains are doing lots and lots of things that we are unaware of. If we were, most of us wouldn't make it out of bed in the morning.

Perloff's article, while easier to read, didn't fascinate me quite as much. What I took from it is that poets must find the form that fits where they are, who they are, what they're saying and what they're doing, and that this changes throughout history. Not really a radical new idea, but one that bears repeating. Sometimes it's easy to get bogged down in genres and criticism and forms and to forget that poetry, like all writing, is an organic thing, because it is created by organic changing creatures, so of course it changes to.

Jarrell made a similiar point in his article, relating the evolution from romanicism to modernism, and I agree that he is foreshadowing post-modernism. He comments on poet's individuality and originality:"..can no longer be recognized by, and condemned or applauded for, its obvious experimentalism" (273). Perhaps all the experiments have been conducted? Although computer-based holographic poems might have something to say about that. But I agree with his statment that "The Muse, forsaking her sterner laws, says to everyone: 'Do what you will'"(273). The field seems to be wide open, although free verse still reigns, mostly, it does seem to most fit our contemporary culture. Does this also mean that no subject is off limits for poetry? That would be wonderful. Does this mean we no longer have to categorize everything? Cuz that would be cool. My storage bins are full.

I enjoyed both readings for this week. As well as being accessible and easy to digest, they point out some important concepts about language in general and poetry in particular.

McLaughlin stated that "Figures of speech twist the meaning of a word ... but they are so common in everyday language that the process of interpreting them occurs almost unconsciously, like any frequently repeated skill" (81). This brought to mind something that has been discussed quite frequently in two of my other courses, George Lakoff's ideas about how our language is so completely chock full of metaphors that we don't even realize it, but that our communication and ways of looking at the world would be completely different without them. Some examples: Life is a journey, business is war, bigger is better, all the sports references we make all day "you scored a homerun on that test" etc etc etc. Taken with F-T article, this use of everyday imbedded metaphors stregthens her view of the continuity poetic language must have with ordinary language.

McLaughlin also makes a good point in the last paragraph where he states that "If figures tell us anything, it's that meaning is up for grabs, that the world can be shaped in an endless variety of forms" (90). I think this is partly what poetry does, it shapes and reshapes our views of the world. I think today, however, with our access to other languages and cultures being so easy and frequent, that our native languages don't have to neccessarily limit what we know, as F-T touches on in her article. It might be more difficult for us to completely grasp the world-view of another language, but it's far from impossible, and poetry is one road of access (there's that life is a journey metaphor again).

What I also liked in F-T article was her reworking of the BBC paragraph. It's a great example of how the parts of poetry we don't really notice, like punctuation, capitalization, line breaks do make a big difference. While rhythm and "poetry" might be inherent in prose, it needs these poetic devices to bring it out.

Like several others, I'm not a big fan of counting meter. In fact, it usually destroys my enjoyment of a poem if I concentrate on it too much, as in, what kind of meter it is, is it regular, does it vary within the poem, etc. It seems to dissect the whole too much. Sort of like deconstruction - don't do it without a heavy pair of rubber gloves. I do, however, like the rhythms in poetry, much as I like the rhythms in music. I also enjoy listening to people speak in normal conversation. We all have individual rhythms to how we talk. Occasionally, these rhythms are iambic pentameter-esque. (I've been doing a lot of eavesdropping lately.) So I began to see Easthope's point that it naturally mimics human speech, and that this could have a lot to do with its variations, that it is not a fixed and rigid structure within a poem. But that doesn't really account for the four-stress line that had been so popular before. So I wondered if our speech now sounding more like iambic pentameter wasn't a result of some ideological sneakiness to "smooth out" the classes and the way people speak so we all tuck into our "class roles" a little more readily. We are all taught iambic pentameter and Shakespeare and how to "speak correctly" the entire way through school, have we become ingrained? Or am I just feeling a little too rebelliously conspiracy theory at the moment?

I was interested in Easthope's ideas about poetry being a discourse brought about through society and history, and that we all in one way or another participate in this. I have a slightly New Historical bent to my theorist side, in that I think the circumstances surrounding the poem and it's creation/creator have an impact on how we "reconstruct" the poem when we read it now, and how we understand and interpret it. While there probably isn't any real "authoritative" reading of any poem, as I'm coming to believe over the past several weeks, I think we do need to take into account what it is a representation (time wise, class wise, etc.) of, even if we choose to throw out those meanings and re-interpret the poem in light of our current readings and constructions of it.

I agree with Brooks' idea that poetry, in order to ease understanding and perhaps criticism, should be viewed like drama. We see drama more as an experience, we do not go to see plays (or movies if we want to be really contemporary, more on that in a bit) for the "main idea," we go to immerse ourselves in another world for a while. We might tell our friends it's about "a bunch of snakes killing people on a plane" but they still have to see it to realize how hilarious those two hours are. Hey, we can't spend all our time with Shakespeare, right? So to think about the poem as another of these experiences, maybe as a monologue in a way, we get more out of it than "life is short, live it up." We get the experience of realization, revelation, and it means more to us than a simple paraphrase.

While I appreciated Leavis's straightforward writing style, I'm still wrestling with this reading. There are points I agree with and points I don't. I was trying to figure out why, and I think maybe I'm putting my contemporary p.o.v. on it. He's looking back on what he thinks is wrong with Victorian poetry from his day and age, and I'm looking back on what I think is wrong with his assessments from my day and age. And the world has changed ALOT since the 1930's. So while I still haven't completely stuck my finger on it, I think that has a lot to do with what I don't agree with. Sort of like, I like his theories, but his application is all wrong.

For example: "Poetry tends in every age to confine itself by ideas of the essentially poetical which, when the conditions which gave rise to them have changed, bar the poet from his most valuable material, the material that is most significant to sensitive and adequate minds in his own day; or else sensitive and adequate minds are barred out of poetry" (195). Good point, I agree. But he condems the Victorian writers their ideas of poetical in favor of his own, and looks forward to condemning what might be poetical in the future (rolls royce, etc.). I prefer poems that are more realistic, and I love poems that take something from everyday and make me see it differently, make me see what's "poetical" about it. I don't think it's that there are so few people capable of understanding poetry, I think it's that poets and critics make it SEEM so hard to understand poetry. It takes a little practice, but so does using a computer or driving, yet we can all do that.

I think it's also Leavis who writes that maybe with our diversification of activities, the poets are now doing something else. This made me think of Bob Dylan, who has been called a poet on many occasions, and who is readily understood by the masses. Maybe there are poet filmmakers, or poet graphic designers, or poet lots of other things as well. So I don't think it's a matter of poetry not being important in our age, I think it's a matter of poetry not being as obvious in our age. Perhaps I'm just getting a little rebellious with New Criticism, because even though I agree with many of their ideas, I think there are many other useful methods of criticism, but that they too need to be looked at in their historical and cultural and biographical contexts. And as future teachers and critics and perhaps poets ourselves, we need to look at ways to adapt these methods to suit our own age, our own point in time.

While I usually don't go in so much for metaphysics (it can get a little too woo-woo for me at times), I really liked Heidegger's essay. He brings up the point that poets use symbols, metaphors and allegories to bring together the sensuous and spiritual, and "legitimizes a belonging together" (248). This feeds into Brooks' discussion of paradox, in that we don't always see how things fit together, especially when they seem at odds to each other, as the sensuous and spiritual often do, but that we could not truly understand or appreciate one without the other.

His discussion on page 251 of the river could just as easily be a discussion of poetry. "The lines just cited tell us that the flow of the river that is named here is an activity that takes its own time, and that such activity is concealed." Poems also take their own time, which is why some can be so hard to get into, we have to learn to relax and go with the flow, and sooner or later we'll see what it has been concealing. "The poetic word unveils this concealment of the river's activity, and indeed unveils it as such an activity. This unveiling is poetic."

Did anyone else get a slight case of deja-vu reading "What are poet's for?" (But there I go, getting all woo-woo.) This was written in the 1940's, but I would certainly say the world is closer to midnight now than then. Perhaps poetics are more important now.

My favorite part of this essay is a quote beginning on page 254: "Poetry is what really lets us dwell. But through what do we attain to a dwelling place? Through building. Poetic creation, which lets us dwell, is a kind of building." I see both dwell and building as nouns and verbs, both the urn and the making of the urn, so to speak. So poetry is both a place to dwell, and a way of building a place to dwell, as in live in and think deeply about. I'm now going to go dwell on my final project.

I like the way that Hollander used examples as definitions, but I'm having some trouble remembering all the different types. I've always had some trouble remembering definitions of forms and meters. Not so much with rhyme schemes, though. Most of my favorite poems are free verse, which have rhythms, but not neccessarily "standard" rhythms or feet or rhyme schemes. So I'm still digesting much of RR, although I agree with Whitney that it would make a wonderful book for teaching creative writing classes.

Cook's introduction struck several chords with me, the first being "The link between theory and practice is self-evident: inherited ideas about what poetry is will have a direct impact on the poetry that gets written" (3). How does this effect poetry in terms of it becoming a "standardized product" (horrible thought), and what does that do to a poet's voice and subject matter? I've always thought of poetry as an individual thing, although one that people can relate their own experiences to. It's often the personal, whether that be personality, voice, experience, evocation of time, place or emotion, through which we find a way into a poem. Or don't find a way, as the case may be.

I never know what to put in a test post. Should it be like musicians do "testing one two three?" Like the emergency broadcast network, "This is a test. This is only a test. If this were a real emergency, I wouldn't be sitting at my computer writing silly things?" Like an announcer or mc "is this thing on?"