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I think the most difficult point of understanding this reading is keeping all of the terms that the author uses organized, and also to keep track of all of the different theories that he introduces and builds on by using these terms.
From what I can tell, the most important aspect of poetry that makes it different from other discourses is the way that it is abstract. Its meaning is defined through the signifiers and not the signified, and is constantly changing each time poetry is being read by an audience and time period that changes. I believe that this is what Easthope refers to as the machine- the idea that poetry is continuously being read and changing its meaning. (I could be way off here). The ghost refers to Eliot’s theory of Tradition, in which all poetry is in some way related to, or based on previous works of poetry. The ghost is the pre-existing works of poetry from which the author cannot escapes its influence.
I’m not sure that I can easily grasp Easthope’s idea of a machine. If the author chose to use his own terms and keep these terms constant throughout the argument, this text would be a lot easier to comprehend. I tried to keep a list between Signified and Signifier, listing all of the attributes and functions the text identifies for both terms. But when it comes to understanding the Signifier, it can only be defined in abstract terms and cannot exist without the signifier, but yet is still to be considered independent in its meaning. This very definition of dependency and independence of the signified is contradictory.
The author focuses so much of his argument on defending that discourse, and language is not transparent; it is not a straightforward transfer of words between the addresser and the addressee. I’m not sure in the English language, with how many words that do have duplicitous meanings, that his fervent defense is necessary. Of course, his argument is much more linguistically structured and complex than I am representing here. I have to admit with this type of reading that when you are in the act of reading, the text seems to be clear and make sense. However, when you try to summarize the theories, it is difficult not to get muddled in the difficult terminology.

The connections between poetry and music, as made by Lowell seemed specifically poignant to me. I have always heard this comparison before, escpecially involving strictly "sing-song" poetry, but Lowell made observations that gave the poetry (related to) music ideas a new freshness.

For instance, her observation that the layman does not take home a Chopin or Debussy score (71) to read at his own pleasure, but the score must be interpreted by musicians who well-skilled and specially trained, gave me pause as to thinking about the need for professional poetry readers/performers. Of course, I will agree with Lowell of the inherent danger of over-acting or over-expressing a poem. Even my most favorite poems, if overdone, will seem hokey to me.

I will say that the article covers much more than just that. When Lowell began, she talked about how most of us have a much more well-developed visual imagination as opposed to an aural imagination (70). This lead to her argument about how poetry, like music, is a hearing art as opposed to visual. Lowell, feels that poetry's true "beauty" (apologies for lacking a better word) is in sound and the printed form should matter as much to us as music notes on a score; or so much so that music notes matter to those who can't read music.

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.

Antony Easthope in this book suggests his readers to treat and understand poetry “as a form of discourse." While defining language and discourse, he suggests his idea of discourse. According to him, “[l]inguistics, the science which takes language as its object, can show how an utterance takes its place in the system of language at levels up to and including the sentence. It cannot show how and why one sentence connects with another into a cohesive whole: this is a matter of discourse.”(p.8) Then he goes on to elucidate his point by alluding to the 18th century concept of syntax, sentence and a group of well-knit sentences-discourse. He also cites a Shakespearean sonnet to show how four sentences in this sonnet form cohesion which in turn transforms them into discourse.After a lengthy and eloborate explaination, he finally gives his definition of "discourse". "Discourse, then, is a term which specifies the way that sentences form a consecutive order, take part in a whole which is homogeneous as well as heterogeneous. And just as sentences join together in discourse to make up an individual text, so texts themselves join others in a larger discourse." With this definition in mind, I try to follow him through the labarynth of different critical theories of Saussure, Lakan,Marx, Jacobson, and Freud,but by the end of Chapter 4, I found myself dazed and confused. When I recollected what I have read in tranquility and pensive mood, I find myself tilting towards Mr Easthope’s idea, “..however much a poem claims to be the property of a speaker represented in it, the poem finally belongs to the reader producing it in a reading.” After these chapters, I have a feeling that I have almost come to the verge of post modernism. We have left behind the conventional conceptions of poetry cherished by both American and British critics.Now my idea of poetry is, to a great extent, in unison with Easthope’s idea of poetry as discourse“which is cohesive and determined simultaneously in three respects: materially, ideologically, subjectively.”

On Amy Lowell’s Poetry as a Spoken Art

Lowell asserts that poetry suffers the most, among arts, from printing. Indeed, with the emerging of printing, ears becomes less trained than eyes. Lowell intends to “restore the audible quality to poetry” by reading poems out loud to feel their “beat” (rhythm schemes) as way to cultivate our ears or “auditory imagination” (74). Lowell’s defend for poetry as a spoken art is understandable because sound effects (“onomatopoeia”) control the making of meanings in some poems. For example, how do we make sense of the poem and its regularity we read last week (alteration), if it was not being read?

However, I am NOT convinced by Lowell’s arguments especially about reading poetry in a proper manner (neither too plainly nor too dramatically): “when a rhythm is to be merely indicated, and when it is to be actively stressed?” (73) Surprisingly, her answer is “experience.” In other words, readers need to familiarize themselves with a poet’ intent, recurring themes in his/her poems and “knowledge of an author’s methods” (73). Lowell might think that readers cannot “read” poetry properly unless they know what it means. How is this workable? Doesn’t the “reading” of poetry (out loud) introduce the meaning in the first place?! Or is what Lowell means a recursive process of poetry reading? Also, how do we sound an “image” without the interference of visual image?

In dealing with poetry as a spoken art, as was stated by Lowell, we must remember that poetry was once strictly oral, filled with memorization aids such as clichés, rhyme, meter, repetition. The residue of these memorization aids were maintain until (and after to some extent) Pound and Eliot broke from the form of their contemporaries. With the advent of free verse, which Lowell speaks of in the conclusion of her essay, it is absolutely a great benefit for poetry to be aided by the performance thereof. Walter Ong in his book Orality and Literacy states that “In oral speech, a word must have one or another intonation or tone of voice—lively, excited, quiet, incensed, resigned, or whatever. It is impossible to speak a word orally without any intonation. In a text punctuation can signal tone minimally: a question mark or a comma, for example, generally calls for the voice to be raised a bit. Literate tradition, adopted and adapted by skilled critics, can also apply some extratextual clues for intonations, but not complete ones. Actors spend hours determining how actually to utter the words in the text before them. A given passage might be delivered in a shout, by another in a whisper”. With free verse being so diverse in its presentation on the page, questions of emphasis, intonation, pauses, and other extratextual cues would benefit a readers understanding of the poem.

In the technological age in which we all no reside, it would be pertinent to reexamine the idea of poetry and its oral beginnings. Now with the ability to capture the voice and moving image of a poet, how are we to apply these aspects of the poet’s poem to the text. Are the secondary entities that we should take note of? Should they be given equal ground as the text thereby needed to be examine in conjunction with our understanding of the text? Should they take precedence over the text due to their inclusion of extratextual values? What are we to make of difference which may occur between text and performance? Should live performance take precedence over recorded or vice versa? What are we to make of deviations between several recordings? If a poet reads her poem at age thirty and we have a recording and its meaning completely differs from a performance read in her sixties, what are we to make of this?

As can be witness, a plethora of questions can be raised when considering the addition of performance to a text poem, be the performance recorded or not. Lowell insists that poetry should not be read as if it were prose, where a performer recognizes the punctuation. She also states that mispronunciation of words has plagued poetry from quite some time and states that these are “bad traditions” in regards to performance. This later idea being of less concern, how is it then that we are to read a poem? What separates a good reading from a bad one and who is to judge? She also indicates disdain for impersonators reading poetry. Lowell has a great amount to say of how not to read a poem, but doesn’t seem to elaborate on “how to read a poem”. Although I am in agreement that poetry should be performed, I am not sure that Lowell should instruct us on how to read a poem or perform a poem. While it is bad to mispronounce words, I would contend that these other elements of the performance are not subject to her conjecture. Performance is the responsibility of the performer. The performer, not the poet, has the ultimate say on how the poem will be performed, unless the performer is the poet. The poet loses that privilege when the poem is brought into the public sphere. The semantic qualities thereof are to exist in a binary state where meaning is subjected onto the poem by the performer in one realm and by the audience in the other. Each audience member can, and most likely will, attribute similar but different meaning to what has been perceived. This reality of the poem as perceived is manufactured into a triad when examine by use of theory, but this is an argument for a different discussion.

To begin with at first I liked Lowell's article less and less with each sentence of it that I read. However, upon thinking about it a little bit after reading it, I am less repulsed by it because I think she sometimes makes extreme comments because she sees poetry as she understands it on the verge of utter destruction. An example of something that I take to be extreme is: "Poetry will come into its Paradise when carefully trained speakers make a business of interpretating it to the world. And poetry needs such interpretation, for I suppose it is only one reader out of a hundred who can possibly get all the beauty out of a poem" (71). I was repulsed by this quote because it seems to turn poetry into something that is not open to everybody.

The above begin said I found other things that she had to say to be interesting. One example is that poetry has a "simple, straightforward appeal" This surprised me because if the essence of poetry always constitutes simplicity and straighforwardness then it would seem that the masses do not need a critic to tell them what a poem means. But maybe Lowell would counter me by saying that it is due to readers being taught improperly how to read a poem that has caused the need for critics to reveal the meaning of poems.

One thing for certain that I would agree with Lowell on is her idea that poetry and music share an "essential kinship" and that one of the ways to recognize this kinship is to open up poetry to orality again. That being said it seems to me that she has a very particular understanding of oral poetry that seems to rely on a few individuals enlightening the masses on the correct way to perform a poem, which in the end causes me to say that Lowell's article is interesting but troublesome.

I was a little lost by the information presented in the theory article. I took from this text that poetry is viewed differently in American and Britain. The British critics appear to define poetry more in terms of the poet while American critics tend to focus on the poem itself. I did not fully understand the point he was making concerning discourse. A poem is considered to be parole because it is an utterance constructed according to and within a system of language. I think he is saying that individual poems can join with other poems to create a poetic discourse, then other texts can join creating an even larger discourse. This poetic discourse is determined materially, ideologically, subjectivity. I was most interested in the author’s talk about subjectivity because this type of discourse is a produce of the reader. However, I am still not sure how I can use this essay to help me understand the poetry I am reading. Help!

I liked what Lowell had to say about the similarities between poetry and oratorical prose. I think I would like to deal with this subject for my final paper. It would be interesting to look at how people who give speeches such as politicians, religious leaders, etc use poetic elements in their prose as well as why they use this method as opposed to straight forward prose. Add rhythm to ordinary words can make a world of difference.

I found Amy Lowell’s argument in Poetry as a Spoken Art to be very insightful. It made me seriously consider the way I approach poetry. I always knew that sound was an important aspect to poetry, but I hardly ever think to read a poem out loud. I always make the mistake of thinking of poetry in terms of printed words on a page. While the visual aspect of poetry is important and can give readers an legitimate understanding of the poem, sound is just as, if not more, important. It is true that readers miss out on so much if they do not take into consideration the audible aspect of poetry. I am now making myself read poetry out loud and it really does bring something different and new to the poem.

I agree with the author that rhythm is essential to poetry. I do not always recognize the specific rhyme patterns, meter, etc that are being used in a poem, but most of the time I am able to realize that there is some kind of musical quality, rhythmic patterns at work in the poem. I cannot think of a poem that does not have some kind of rhythm. However, I sometimes have a hard time understanding how those rhythmic patterns play into the overall meaning of the poem.

Lowell seems to feel that part of the problem with reading poetry out loud is that it is often does incorrectly. I felt that she was saying that readings of poetry should be natural and that readings should not be forced or acted out. For the most part, I agree with this notion. I think that it does an injustice to the poem and the author when someone reads in a manner that is overdramatic or in a manner that seeks to shock audiences when the poem doesn’t call for such a reading. On the other hand, I think that a performative aspect can be worked into the reading of a poem. This should be given a lot of consideration by the reader so that the poem is not overshadowed by the performance because I think the goal of the performance should be to enhance the poem, not take away from it.

In case anyone else has a problem with downloading Easthope 6-10, Dr. Sherwood suggested to right click and hit "Save Target As", which worked fine.

(help!) In thinking about next week, if anyone could email me the Easthope 6-10 Pdf as an attachment (vbjf@iup.edu), I would be very grateful as I (alone?) am having problems downloading it.

I initially understand Easthope far better than Brooks (except on paradox) and Eliot (happy birthday, TS). Easthope comes at all this very logically and methodically, and with great excerpts. For me, one major standout idea or summation is “what differentiates /big/ from /pig/ is the sound, not the intention of the speaker” (12), soon followed by the concept that the original context is one of infinite contexts. However, I begin to lose Easthope when turning to the chapters on ideology (is this necessary after convincingly arguing material discourse?) and subjectivity--particularly with subjectivity involving psychoanalysis which requires me to accept quite a bit in order to stay with Easthope at this point.

On Lowell—such a great voice that I didn’t mind being prescribed (helped) how to read poetry. Her Shakespeare example, how his words have benefited from being spoken, convinced me of her whole stance. As an aside, people say/said “winde”? It was interesting to read a practical take on speaking versus writing after reading Easthope on Derrida theoretically. It was a very enlightening read and the first author from this anthology (so far) that I immediately want to read more from.

Hi there,

In the following are the updated questions Kamal and I raised for our presentation on Robert Duncan's poem, "poetry, a natural thing." Please spare a minute to read through. However, we might not cover them all in our discussion for the time constraince. Comments are welcomed! For visual images and references to this poem, please visit Wiki at http://sherwoodweb.org/wiki/index.php/Poetry%2C_as_Natural_Thing

Questions:

1. Robert Duncan’s poem is about poetry. Can you see some differences in his conception of poetry and that of Brooks?

Here are some definitions of poetry from the different periods of 20th century. According to the famous poetry critic Helen Vendler,“In the code language of criticism when a poem is said to be about poetry the word "poetry" is ften used to mean: how people construct an intelligibility out of the randomness they experience; how people choose what they love; how people integrate loss and gain; how they distort experience by wish and dream; how they perceive and consolidate flashes of harmony; how they (to end a list otherwise endless) achieve what Keats called a "Soul or Intelligence destined to possess the sense of Identity." Charles Olson in his seminal essay, Projective Verse, which has become almost de facto manifesto for the Black Mountain Poets (Robert Duncan is one of them.) calls for a poetry of "open field" composition to replace traditional closed poetic forms with an improvised form that should reflect exactly the content of the poem. This form was to be based on the line, and each line was to be a unit of breath and of utterance. The content was to consist of "one perception immediately and directly (leading) to a further perception". Poetry, according to, Archibald MacLeish“A poem should not mean/ But be.”

2. “…a call we heard and answer/ in the lateness of the world/ primordial bellowings/ from which the youngest world might spring,”Do you think this is the reviveration of T.S. Elliot’s “Tradition and Individual talent”?

3. Do you find the elements of Romantic poetry in Duncan’s poem?(particularly that of Wordsworth.)

4. In comparison to the rhetorical articulation in the first half, the second half of the poem is mainly constructed by two “natural” images—salmon and moose. How does the second half echo“poetic actions,” described in the first half, such as “leaping” and “bellowings”?

5. "a little heavy, a little contrived." Accordingly, this line is drawn from John Crowe Ransom's rejection letter to Robert Duncan(Mark Andrew Johnson's Robert Duncan 70). New Critics, such as Random and Brooks, often demonstrate a close reading, looking for "irony," "paradox" and "ambiguity" in poems. How does Duncan response to the demands of New Critics in this poem? In other words, why does this poem end with a rather simple line--"all moose"?

6. In our last class we learned Brook’s resistance against paraphrasing poetry and the guest professor’s dramatic demonstration of reading “conflicts” and “turning points” in poems. Influenced by Robert Browning’s literary technique of “dramatic monologue,” Duncan’s poetry is not merely a "flat" text, but involved tensions, conflicts and interactions. Could you specify these aspects on the second half the poem?

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.

I was impressed by F.R. Leavis’ defense of modern poetry, especially in relation to its publication in 1932. I largely agree with his complaint about the effect of Victorian poetry on popular conceptions of poetry, that it has made readers of poetry “become accustomed to the idea that certain things are poetical, e.g. flowers, dawn, dew, birds, love, archaisms, and country-place names” (197). Today, some 70 years after Leavis first made this point, I think this idea is still with us, not only in society at-large, but also in the English classroom at the high school and collegiate levels. We might not necessarily teach ideas about flowers being poetic, but in organizing historically/genre based classes, or writing about poems in terms of their relations to genres and history, we often begin to organize our ideas along such lines. The Classical poets alluded to the Greeks and often emphasized carpe deim, for example; the Romantics really liked nature and put children on a pedestal. While these classifications may be useful and largely justifiable, I think Leavis believes, as I do, that we must always remember that things are never so simple, and that we cannot and should not define poetry, as a term, along the lines of its subject matter; that is, we should not dismiss something as doggerel because it is not about what we think poetry should be about. For Leavis, of course, this does not mean we cannot criticize particular schools or periods of poetry along other lines; this is precisely what he does with nineteenth century poetry. His definition of what constitutes good poetry, as I can extrapolate it, draws on a Marxist definition of history. For Leavis, the poet is the product and chronicler of his (or her) time; he has for his materials the forms and poetic fashions, which he may use or break with as is warranted by their appropriateness to the social climate of his contemporary world (a similar point to the one Elliot makes about the poet’s duty towards history). The ultimate measure of a poem lies in the correspondence of its expression (the merger of form and content) to the realities (social, political, economic, aesthetic, etc.) of its time of production. “All that we can fairly ask of the poet is that he shall show himself to have been fully alive in our time,” Leavis writes (197). He doesn’t like the escapist attitude of the Victorians, treating poetry as a refuge, largely because he feels we cannot really do that, escape from the world into language, because language is our relation with the world, and we cannot escape those relations. In this area again I think I agree with him.

That said, there are a few points in the excerpt in which he completely loses me. What, for one, is this discussion of, or rather against, anthropology about? I refer to the section in his discussion of The Waste-Land which reads

The part that science has played in the process of disintegration is matter of commonplace: anthropology is, in the present context, a peculiarly significant expression of the scientific spirit. To the anthropological eye beliefs, religions, and moralities are human habits – in their odd variety too human. Where the anthropological outlook prevails, sanctions wither (199)

What is Leavis suggesting here, that there is something transcendent or metaphysical about religion outside of human belief; perhaps that poetry should be treated this way? What are the withering sanctions to which he refers? He seems to contrast this scientific/objective eye towards culture with the unifying expression of Elliot’s poem he finds in Tiresias’ all-encompassing god’s eye, but what is he doing in this contrast? To what extent is Leavis resisting proto-New Critical ideas, to what extent is producing them?

I liked this reading for the fact that it discusses the meaning of a poem- what can be understood as within the poem itself, and what meanings are extrapolated or interpreted from the poem. While I get the feeling that form and structure of poetry are still important for this author, he warns against understanding a poem by its structure alone. Where last week the author claims that “Poetry is the language of Paradox”, in this particular section he identifies irony as the primary tool of correctly understanding the poem’s meaning. “And therefore, if we persist in approaching the poem as primarily a rational statement, we ought not to be surprised if the statements seems to be presented to us always in the ironic mode” (211). Just as paradox pairs ideas in conflict with one another, so does irony present something one way, when it is meant to be the understood in context of the opposite. In a lengthy discussion of form and content, what can be understood from the poem, and the mistakes that can be made in attempting to paraphrase, or summarize the poems’ most obvious meanings, Brook’s forces the everyday student to question everything in the poem before making hasty conclusions about the poems’ meaning. I liked this reading in that it questions the commonly accepted modes for studying poetry in the classroom setting. And at the same time he is supporting the necessity of form in poetry, Brooks also digresses from allowing the form to dictate the meaning of a poem.
Brooks also discusses the role of the author in poetry, claiming that “The perils of biographical bias”(183) can taint a readers’ understanding. In other words, by trying to find biographical facts of the author in the characters, voice, or symbolism within the poem, the reader becomes distracted and off-course in trying to understand the poem. “In the total activity, one can separate the actor from the action only by an act of abstraction” (185). Clearly, Brooks associates abstraction as a necessary tool, just as paradox and irony are, to understanding a poem. Abstraction, in this sense is meant to remove the language and meaning of poetry from everyday associations, biographical bias, and a reliance of form and structure to give definition to a poem. I think i'm still working with all of the compact information Brooks included in this reading, amidst the several examples and ambiguous language he uses himself.

I was very pleased when reading Leavis’s essay when he found fault with certain critics, such as J.C. Squire. The views of Squire are based upon preconceived notions that “a poet can mention a rose, but not a Rolls-Royce, that poetry is a refuge and not an attack, that a poet is a sensitive refugee and not a man facing life”(197). Such ideas are ludicrously based on poetry which was not contemporary at the time, as in T. S. Eliot, but based on older poets or poets of older styles and I was thankful that Leavis came to the defense of the poets attempting to make change within the art.
Leavis outlines what he believes a poet is, no doubt preparing us of the later defense which we just encountered. His account of what a poet is very interesting, and very accurate for poets not only his time, but pervious and after. He states that a poet is “unusually sensitive, unusually, aware, more sincere and more himself than the ordinary man can be” (195). The poet, therefore, must use these abilities to encapsulate the time in which he or she lives and utilize this expression in a manner most clearly representative to the poet’s time. With the vast changes occurring in Eliot’s time, it only makes sense that poetry had to undergo dramatic changes as well. It is also understandable why those who disliked the style and content of Eliot’s poetry would remark that a poet cannot write about a Rolls-Royce and that the “poet is a refugee and not a man facing life” (197). It was therefore essential for those who found Eliot’s poetry amiable to come to the defense of him and his form.
Leavis demonstrates early on in his essay how other critics, such as Arnold, desired to demonstrate an hierarchal structure in regards to poets, placing Shakespeare, Milton, and Spencer at the penultimate level. With these three at the top, our ruler for the measurement of other poets is skewed substantially. In order to judge other poets, we must be sure that the manner in which they write is similar to those poets mention, and thus writers such as Eliot would rate extremely low, especially since his rhythm and rhyme are no where near those of the three kings. Living in a mindset such as this would not allow for changes in the art, after all, the best poets would have been long cold by that time anyway.

I found this week's Brooks reading to be especially insightful at points. I feel that in these chapters he lays a good ground work for evaluating and thinking about poetry. I agree with Brooks that a poem cannot be summarized. I think his analogy of the scaffolding that a critic or student places around a poem when analyzing it is an accurate one. It is important to remember when doing a close reading of a poem that while particular word, sound or structure choices the poet made when writing the work can certainly add to the value of the poem the value of the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. I think this is what brook is saying regarding taking into account the biography of the poet or the allusions made in the work is important, but that one must also remember that the poem itself cannot be boiled down to any particular meaning separate from itself. In other words, summarizing a poem, even if the reader gets the meaning correct, if a correct answer is even possible, will never communicate the message of the poem in the same manner as the poem because of the lack of meter, rhyme or whatever other modes of language the poem contains.
I think that understanding poetry in this manner requires a change in the way that the average beginning poetry reader thinks about poetry. I think that as a future teacher of poetry that the analogies found in the Brook text will be especially helpful to me in a class room setting. Brooks’s comparison of poetry with the genre of drama at first caught me off guard. However the explanation that Brooks provided seemed especially insightful to me "The dynamic nature of drama, in short, allows us to regard it as an action rather than as a formula for action or as a statement about action...the least confusing way in which to approach a poem is to think of it as a drama" (204). This way of thinking about a poem really connected with the idea of paradox from the Brooks chapters we read for last week. Thinking about the poem in this way encourages finding the word play, paradox, irony, rhyme scheme and all the other elements of the poem and understanding how they all work together to create a whole. Also it seems to minimize the tendency of many readers to consider outside influences like biography and authorial intent since meaning can only be found within the poem itself rather than outside sources.
It is this responsibility of the poem to communicate that I found most interesting in the Leavis reading. Leavis states that "poetry matters because of the kind of poet who is more alive than other people, more alive in his own age. He is, as it were, at the most conscious point of the race in his time" (195). I agree with Leavis that the purpose of poetry should be to communicate the essence of reality. If this is true then outside influences like biography, historical placement and even authorial intent, which all still ma be taken into consideration, take a back seat to the message of the poem itself, and the mode the poet chose to convey that message.

I have to say that I enjoyed reading the Leavis article. I liked his writing style, and his ability to say exactly what he wanted to. I don't agree with him necessarily, but appreciate the way he said what he did.

I question Leavis' notion that basically no one is able to truly appreciate poetry, along with what appears to be his very limited canon. His apparent contempt for many of the poets simply serves, I would think, to do nothing but alienate his audience. However, I also think that he probably doesn't care.

On Leavis' comments about Eliot, I was struck by the following: "the poem in any case exists, and can exist, only for an extremely limited public equipped with special knowledge" (200). This goes back to Leavis' idea that no one is truly able to appreciate poetry. If the poem can only exist for those of us who have special knowledge, then what would be the true point in writing the poem? In addition, what is this special knowledge that one needs? Every reader is going to have their own specialized 'community of practice' that produces specific experiences and knowledge. Is Leavis referring to a peom being written for an individual 'community of practice' so that only that group can appreciate it? I think this limited thinking and lack of belief in an audience is actually quite unfortunate.

Leavis’s claim that “Poetry matters because of the kind of poet who is more alive than other people, more alive in his own age,” (195) started me thinking. His take on poetry as something meaningful, or an encapsulation of a mind that is growing seems in contrast to the well repeated line, “A poem should not mean/ just be.” But, he does make a convincing argument with his example on the O’ Shaughnessy poem doing the opposite, which I found to be hilarious, if not depressingly so. Still, I find myself not at all resistant to Leavis’s definition, and will apply it in some form or another as to the poetry I read from here on, because I too, believe that poetry should aspire to something more than “just being.”

Leavis’s example from T.S. Elliot’s “The Wasteland” helped me get the full sense of what he was trying to say. He makes the comparison between the natural budding of lilacs out of barren land to the sterility and disgust associated with sex. Since I do not know at what time T.S. Elliot wrote the poem, I cannot say certainly what epoch of human experience Elliot was referring to (perhaps the Dustbowl and depression of the 1930s), but whatever it was, Leavis made the metaphor between plants and human beings clear.

Leavis seemed not to care so much about form as he did about the content (consciousness) of a poem. Apparently, and I could be mistaken, Leavis is simply looking for a poem to “move” him in some way, to get at the heart on his argument about consciousness.

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.