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I enjoyed the readings for class this week. Levin’s article gave me a good understanding of some of the criticism of Victorian poetry, and I think he does a great a job of presenting his arguments and criticism. I like how he references 19th century poetry as being disconnected from the world, as mainly having to create their own dream-worlds. I don’t think this was novel only to 18th/19th century poetry, but perhaps Levin is right in that the disconnections from society in poetry during this time were more prevalent and more problematic? I wasn’t sure about his opening line though: “Poetry matters little to the modern world” (193). Do you agree? I think the rational part of me does agree, though the more optimistic part of me can’t. What do others think about this?

About the rest of The Well Wrought Urn, I thought it was very interesting the references Brooks makes to Greek philosophy in chapter ten. While it was interesting, it also left me a little confused. However, the same was true for some of the parts we read for class last week. I am finding though that the class presentations are very helpful. Everyone did a great job last week, and the presentations tend to organize some of my thoughts and help me make connections to other readings and parts of the class. I look forward to more class presentations.

It is difficult for me to understand some of the theoretical works we have been reading about poetry. In some ways I feel that this approach to poetry kills some of the spark and emotion of poetry. On the other hand, I can see that looking at poetry through different lenses can lead to a deeper understanding of poetry. I’ll try to give my interpretation of Leavis, but I am not sure it will be correct. He does not care much for the way 19th century poetry did not recognize the time in which it was created. Instead it dealt with classical times or other worldly places and times. Leavis felt that Eliot and other modern poets did a good job because the mark of their day and age could be found in their poetry. This made their poetry more realistic and true.

Brooks just reiterated some of the stances toward poetry that he made in last week’s reading. He calls for a reading of poetry that deals with interpreting the poem without solely relying on contextual information. He appears to say that the poem should give readers all of the meaning they need within the poem itself. I don’t think that restricting a reader’s interpretation in any way is good. It is important to consider all of the things that can give a poem meaning. Readers should be exposed to these things and use their own judgment to figure out which ones best fit the intention of the poem.

Leavis seems to be saying that 19th century poetry often cut itself off from what was happening in the real world. 19th century poetry exemplified an unrealistic approach by dealing with dream worlds, an idealistic natural world, etc. Such poetry did not take into consideration the complexity of social and political issues of their culture. It sounds like Leavis considered 19th century poetry to be more fluff than substance. He feels that it is essential that poets show that they are “fully alive in our time” and “be adequate to modern life.” Leavis argues that T.S. Eliot is a good example of what good poetry should be because he is able to be a critic and a poet in his works. Eliot uses wit and irony to make social comments yet he does not ignore poetic elements such as metrical devices and a sense of tradition.

I think that there is a place for both modern and 19th century techniques in good poetry. Although, I personally prefer poems that are more on the realistic side. There is a time and place for the dream world and the real world. I think that people can identify more easily with modern poetry because of its subject matter. Poetry can have many functions and one is not necessarily more important than another. Readers can gain a great deal of understanding from them all if the poet is able to create a good poem.

I agree with Brooks that poems should not be reduced to just one meaning. Poetry can have multiple meanings depending on who is reading the poem, the time period, etc. I think it is beneficial to look at poem as a poem. However, I do not feel that this means contextual information should be ignored. Neither approach should be abandoned. Each brings different perspectives and new insights. Each brings a new experience since as Brooks states the poem itself is an experience. I think that Brooks is excluding some very important considerations a reader must take on in order to truly appreciate poetry.

I’m going to comment on Brooks after class tonight because I disagree with so much of it that I suspect I’m reading it wrong (particularly because I agreed so much with his take on paradox).

For now, I’ll comment on the question that came up at the end of class, so this is for anyone who cares to read further:

“What we may get from reading poetry we don’t understand?” For me, I’m not completely susceptible to authorial intent or meaning. Just a few months ago I would not even finish a poem I did not understand, but this Spring I had a course with Dr. Alvine who had an opening exercise where she would read a poem aloud three times, asking us to privately write any impressions we had after each of the three readings. The poems were often ambiguous with the title and author omitted, which forced us to focus on structure, word choice (odd or interesting words), personal associations, rhyme if any, etc., rather than authorial intent or meaning. (Her own intent was for us to have a more pure, initial reader response.) So I would have this poem in front of me, having no idea what it meant, but liking or disliking it for reasons other than intent and meaning. But when the title was revealed, I was able to maintain my version--I had two versions, mine and the author’s. Before doing these exercises, I would always immediately dismiss my interpretation if it differed from the authorial intent (if discernible). This also allowed me to much better understand and experience text as having no meaning in itself without interpretation.

This is probably why I’m now stumbling on Brooks who does not separate structure from meaning, does not see the creator choosing the medium first, and is speaking with more absolutes in these two chapters (if I understand him correctly).

See you in class!

On page 180 the writer alludes to stream of consciousness and remarks, “…the stream of consciousness has flowed with all the seeming purposelessness of a real stream to a point far from its source, casually floating on its surface references to Leda, Plato, the ugly duckling, and a host of personal reminiscences.” “ Among School Children” was published in1927 and Joyce’s “Ulysses”, the stream of consciousness novel was published in 1922. Although some earlier poets like Browning have tried to trace the mind of their characters in their poems and followed their stream of consciousness, but they confine it either to their immediate past life or incidents belonging to the near past.For example, in Browning’s ‘Fra Lippo Lippi” the character’s mind is traveling back and forth in time and space, but his stream of thought is limited to his time and a particular place. Yeats’ consciousness like that of Joyce, drifts into remote time and space of ancient Greece and encompasses the humanity at large. If I am not wrong, I think Mr. Brooks seems to be suggesting the formal advent of the stream of consciousness technique into poetry.

I find continuity of the contentions that he has been pursueing in the preceding chapters. The insistence on not to emphasise biographical elements while trying to interpret or to understand a poem, is in this chapter also. On page 183 he talks of “biographical bias” when he is commenting the interpretation of following lines- “Her present image floats into the mind— Did Quattrocento finger fashion it Hollow of cheek as though it drank the wind And took a mess of shadows for its meat? ,” by some of his opponent whose opinion he can not accept. They believe that the aging figure in these lines is Poet’s beloved. However, Brooks remarks, But I believe that, in making this interpretation, they have allowed themselves to be too much influenced by the assumption that the woman in Yeats's thought must be Maude Gonne; and have therefore concluded, from the dates of the poem—the perils of biographical bias!- that the Ledaean body is that of an old woman.”

The idea of paradox finds its way into this chapter also,, when he discusses the theme of “becoming” and “being” towards the end of it. In my opinion, Brooks comparative study of “Among School Children “ and "Sailing to Byzantium" helps me to understand the concept of “becoming” and “being” better. Brooks also brings out the paradox in human knowledge, -- he who has, does not know, and he who does not have, can perceive its presence. Brooks put forth this idea vividly on page 190. On the same page he again harps on the string that he has been harping in the previous chapters--to look at a poem as a whole and try to understand its parts in its “organic context”.

Chapter XI is the summing up of what he has been discussing in the previous chapters, but I like his idea of ‘structure’, which according to him is not ‘form’ in conventional sense in which we think it as {a kind of envelope which "contains" the "content"}(194), rather,it conditions or molds itself according to the content.For Brooks structure means, “a structure of meanings, evaluations, and interpretations; and the principle of unity which informs it seems to be one of balancing and harmonizing connotations, attitudes, and meanings.” (195.) However his concept of harmony is to unite not the like elements but unlike ones. Here I am reminded of one of the atributes of romantic imagination – to create harmony out of flux, to combine ‘caves of ice’ and ‘sunny pleasure domes’, or to place fire and ice side by side.

One may not agree with Brooks on many issues, but this book gives one something to start with or to form one’s initial opinion about poetry and how to approach a poem.

I have to say that overall I am finding these New Criticism readings to be interesting. I still largely disagree with everything that they are saying but I think that to some degree one needs to read them in order to have some understanding of the history of literary criticism in the U.S.

One thing that I found interesting in the Leavis article was the idea that the majority of people in Leavis' day were incapable of understanding poetry. He suggests that this is due to the fact that the poetry of his day has "no roots" and that there is no live tradition of poetry.

Another thing that I found interesting in the essay was the idea that the poet is more attuned to the world than anyone else. As Leavis says, "poetry can communicate the actual quality of experience with a subtlety and precision unapproachable by other means" (195). I found this to be interesting because it reminds me of some of Emerson's ideas about the poet. For example, Emerson writes in an essay of his that it is not that a blacksmith is incapable of seeing the sun, rather he looks at it and only sees a ball of heat in the sky, whereas the poet sees that ball of heat and its signficance in Nature.

The final interesting thing that I want to mention is Leavis idea of what a great modern poet needs to do. Leavis says, "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" (197). I find this interesting because it connects somewhat with what Eliot was saying about poets in the essay we read for last week. As Eliot also placed emphasis on a poet being a man of his time, along with letting the history of the poetic tradition speak through him, no wonder Leavis' favorite poet is Eliot.

Dear all,

Here are questions about intertextuality. Please feel free to comment.

1.How do you understand the “synonymous” relationship between textuality and intertextuality? (Princeton 142) In other words, how does intertextuality come into the play of textuality or vise versa? Let's have an in-class exercise!

2.Could you tie the discussion of “intertextuality” to “onomatopoeia” and “iconicity” in poetry?

3.(We might not go though this unless we have time)
The main feature of “Intertextuality” is the infiniteness of interpretation and the loss of self-sufficiency and authority in texts (141). Do you view such trend as a crisis of authorized meanings or as a positive interaction across disciplines?

It is important for a poet to know their literary past according to T.S. Elliot. I feel that Elliot has a valid argument because knowing one’s past often results in writers being more aware of their own time. The past can give writers guidance and direction, which will result in better works. Knowing past literature can benefit writers in the sense that they can learn to improve upon and expand upon their predecessors so that new, creative, fresh poetry will emerge. I do not feel that it is essential to a great deal about past poets, but I do feel that some knowledge will lead to better writing.

I had some trouble with The Ister Hymn by Martin Heidegger. It seems that this article is arguing that the binaries of sensuous and spiritual meanings are not sufficient enough for modern poetry which blurs and crisscrosses these categories. I found the statement that language is the shaper of man, not man the shaper of language to be interesting. You have to have something (language) to respond to, so there first must be language. Overall, I am pretty confused by this article.

Brooks brings up an approach to viewing poetry that I thought to be important. It is important to look at a work of poetry as piece unto itself. For example, readers often take into consideration Wordsworth’s biography when trying to understand his poetry. While this type of reading certainly has its place, but the poem should be able to speak for itself as well. Reading a poem in both ways could bring readers various aware nesses and viewpoints concerning the meaning of a poem that only one approach may have overlooked. When I read a poem I want to get as much as possible from it, and I feel these different approaches would only enhance my understanding.

The juxtaposition of images and words, as spoke of on page 9 in The Well Wrought Urn where T. S. Eliot is quoted as saying “that perpetual slight alteration of language, words perpetually juxtaposed in new and sudden combinations”, is a poetic element which exist in contemporary poetry, as well as poetry of the past, which I find to be one of the most striking and aesthetically pleasing. The poets ability to create metaphors or images in a fresh manner which teases out new understandings or feelings about the subject by such juxtaposing can elevate the poem, and what we take from the poem to a level much higher than by the use of more commonplace metaphor or vocabulary. Several examples which I have found in poetry of the last fifty years include a description of football player in James Wright’s poem “Autumn Begins In Martins Ferry, Ohio”. In second line of the final stanza Wright describes the players as “suicidally beautiful” in a word combination which I would imaging to be used quite sparingly in regards to describing people, especially the children, as the image was formed through the eyes of the parents.

An example of a metaphor which exhibits “new and sudden” combinations can be found in Charles Simic’s poem “Dismantling the Silence” where the silence is personified as having a material form which is not only tangible, but able to be dissected. In the third line of the first stanza he instructs about silence, “With a sharp whistle slit its belly open”. In such an instance, not only is silence given an odd quality of being tangible, but silence is to be used as a scalpel. This unusual metaphor of destroying silence with a whistle by dissecting its “belly” is another juxtaposing of unexpected images and qualities which enable the reader to have a new understanding or idea of how a common activity of breaking silence with a whistle can be viewed.

A third instance very similar to Simic’s expands on the idea of using and uncommon way of envisioning an event or object. Jan Beatty in her poem “Report From The Skinhouse” uses the juxtaposing in the title in one word “skinhouse”, but continues in the first three stanzas:

I went looking for a body

The apple, tree, the river.
Gliding voice, curve of arm,
Pearly blue uterus.

Muscled calf, the neptune green
eye, blood with the same
taste as mine.

In this instance, she begins using images of nature to describe a body, but turns the flow of the poem by interjecting “Pearly blue uterus”, which interrupts what could be viewed as beauty with an image of the grotesque (especially in regards of the use fact that in order for the uterus to be blue, it must be dead) and unexpected. In the next stanza she uses the same technique, this time using “blood with the same taste as mine” to interrupt the flow and present an uncommon element into the poem.
These poetic devices are elements which I find, no only quite appealing and intelligent, but markers of strong poetic ability when utilized in a manner which is beneficial to the poem, as in the examples above.

Brooks states that poetry is something that is natural and a fundamental human activity.
Many people dismiss modern poetry as irresponsible, but it is really no more difficult than traditional poetry. Like traditional poetry, readers have to search for the meanings in the poem. Readers must take into account all that the poem is communicating. All poetry calls for careful reading. Maybe it is harder to understand some of the abstractions of modern poetry and easier to understand the general meaning of traditional poem, but a close reading of both kinds of poems would reveal deeper insights. An example of how complicated traditional poetry can be is found later in Brook’s text when he talks about the debate over how a single word can change so much meaning in a poem. Eliot, Murry, and Garrod all interpret Keat’s line “Beauty is truth, truth beauty” in different ways. This shows that all poetry is full of meaning that good readers have to dig for if they want to get the full affect of the poem.

I found what Eliot had to say about poetry to be interesting and confusing at times. He stated that poetry is an escape from emotion and personality and that the artist is about self-sacrifice. I do agree that the artist does sacrifice a part of themselves in order to make creative pieces. I can see how some artists feel so burdened by their emotions and life that they feel a tremendous need to get those out and the way for them to get it out is to write poetry, play music, etc. So I understand that writing those emotions are really an escape from such feeling, which if kept in could cause a lot of pain and hardship for the artist.

Well, I have to admit that I don't know exactly what I want to say. Having just a vague understanding of new criticism I feel like I have a lot of issues with what I read. But with that said, I am unsure of where to start. Upon reading the "Well Wrought Urn" I thought to myself, this is what I know about studying poetry. But I also know that the last time I studied poetry was sometime in high school, where my teacher was more than likely blissfully unaware of the different ways in which one could study poetry. So while the idea of explicitly studying a poem and trying to explain the meaning is more what I know of studying poetry, that doesn't necessarily mean that I think it's a good idea.

Most of my questions about the WWU came in chapter 7 with the discussion of Wordsworth and paradox. Brooks says that Wordsworth was "probably not aware,...of the extent to which he was employing paradox" (125). Okay...well, how does Brooks know that? I know that Wordsworth thought his poetry to be simple and straightforward, but that doesn't necessarily mean he didn't know what he was writing. I had the same reaction several pages later when Brooks points out that Wordsworth probably didn't know he was making a pun in his poem. Again, how can Brooks be sure? My problem with this is that there is a neglect for context and the personal.

The sociolinguist in me is in a snit right now with the idea of ignoring the poet or the historical context or even the current context and just reading a poem as Brooks did of Wordsworth, "it may be interesting to consider the 'Ode' as a poem, as an independent structure" (124). I don't believe that one can understand a poem without knowing the context in which it was written. In fact, I don't know that one can truly know what the poet meant unless one is privileged enough to be able to ask the poet him/herself. I believe that there are valid points to be made in reading a poem just for the poem's sake; however, it's not how I would necessarily choose to do it.

Brook's section on The Language of Paradox was interesting to me. I am returning to my previous entry of questioning the author's role in writing poetry, and what the author includes that is intentional and what is not. Brooks uses Wordsworth as an example. After pages of examples that Wordsworth probably did not intend to be paradoxes in his writings, Brooks identifies the real way Wordsworth intentionally uses paradoxes in his writings: "Wordsworth...was consciously attempting to show his audience that the common was really uncommon, the prosaic was really poetic" (Brooks 7). By trying to find beauty in the common everyday, Wordsworth relied heavily on natural imagery in his poems.
While I do agree that paradoxes can be seen in a lot of poetry, I am not sure that I agree that it is the language of poetry. Just as metaphors, alliteration, rhyme and meter are poetic tools or devices, so are paradoxes another poetic tool. However, seeing how Brooks is able to find so many underlying paradoxes in Wordsworths' writings that were not intentional, it is probable that paradoxes occur, either blatantly or underlying, in every type and form of poetry.
My question has always been in literature that if we cannot identify the authorial intent, but can support our theories in literature with supportive quotations, then is a new theory applied to a piece of literature relevant? I think yes, but that there is a threshold. How far can a person extrapolate from the text before they are completely removed from it, and in their own mode of thought independent from the work itself. I experienced this questioning during a course I took on William Blake/Percy Shelley. After reading Songs of Experience/Innocence, the professor brought up philosophical theories from Plato to Nietzsche, and how they related to this poetry. Although I could tell my professor had read many scholarly interpretations of this work, I still feel that there was too much extrapolating going on to actually attach meaning to the work of art itself. As much as the authors up to this point in the course have fought against free verse, I do see a relevance and freedom of being able to write and create art outside of the confines of structured poetry. It is the meaning behind poetry, not the structure, that is paramount to defining the value and significance of poetry.

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.

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.

Out of our readings for class this week, I was most interested in Ch. 4 of the Well Wrought Urn. I like how Brooks sets up the dichotomy of modern poetry and the poetry of the past and then goes forth to examine some of the misconceptions or assumptions about the differences between modern poetry and what has preceded it.

I appreciate the many observations Brooks makes in this chapter: the examination of a poem is not locating a set of ideas, but a process of exploration; not only is our reading of a poem an exploration, but the act of making it is as well; the poet as a maker, not a communicator. This last observation is the one that interested me most. Brooks attributes the English professor as being embedded with the notion of poetry as communication. I have to agree with him. Looking back on all the class I’ve taken that have involved the teaching of poetry, the poet was often taught as a communicator, not a maker. Has anyone else encountered what Brooks argues for here? Most importantly, perhaps, is the use of this knowledge for those of us who plan on becoming future English professors, which is something I also considered when reading this piece.

I for the most part really enjoyed the reading for class tonight. I had read the essays before, but The Well Wrought Urn was new text for me. I loved Brook's explaination of how to read and understand poetry. The terms imaginative understanding and referring to the poem as organic especially struck me. I was familar with the term "close reading" but the previous two were new terms to me. I think the term imaginitive understanding is an excellent description for the way we think about poetry. Due to the language of paradox, which Brook discusses heavily, it is necessary to employ imagination when attempting to understand poetry.
I also really enjoyed reading the combination of Brooks and Eliot for the same class. It seemed like Eliot was looking backwards at understanding the history of poetry while Brooks was uring the reader to look forward, while still embracing the past. I think that Eliot places a little too much responsiblity on the poet. I agree that knowledge of past poetry and all literature and history that has come before is important, but not always essential in creating "good poetry."
Brooks really gave me a renewed appriciation of Wordsworth. I like that on page 140 when critcizing Wordsworth's VII stanza as weak that he does take into account authorial intent. However, along this same line of thinking I think he takes authorial intention a bit too far on page 71 when he states, regaurding Herrick "Herrick the Anglican parson who lived so much of his life in Devonshire and apparently took so much interste, not only in the pagan literature of Rome and Greece, but in the native English survivals of the old fertility cults." I like Brook's reading of Herick's work, but unless he knows for certain that Herick studied pagan practices, which he does not indicate, I don't think that it has a place in the reading of the poem. I do agree that poetry is organic and that the inturpretation of it is constantly evolving, but I don't think that the reader has a right to assume that a writer has or has not studied a specific subject unless a known fact.

Oddly enough, this semester has provided my first exposure to New Criticism as a theory (i.e. it's the first time I'm reading it's foundational texts). I had teachers in high school who definately used it to teach literature, especially poetry, but I had never studied it's mechanics, so to speak- what it looks at specifically and why. I mark this as odd because in earning my degree in English and Textual studies from Syracuse, a program pretty evenly divided between literature and theory, we never studied it specifically as a critical theory. At most, teachers would emphasize close reading as an important skill to develop, a focus a writer should not loose sight of. The program's required introductory theory course, however, brushed over actual study of the school of criticism, assuming we had some exposure to it in high school and thereby already knew what it was all about, while simultaneously positing it as an enemy, the opponent of "theory," and thereby representative of all that is wrong with the world. Not suprising, Syracuse being the bastion of pinko commie liberalism that it is.
Reading Brooks' "The Well Wrought Urn" made me aware of some of the misconceptions I may have had about New Criticism. Perhaps they aren't misconceptions per se, but the Brooks book certainly defied my expectations. First of all, I was struck by how positive Brooks generally remains throughout the reading. He does make passing references to purportedly "great" poems, and clearly has heirarchical ideas in mind, but he does not write off whole schools of poetry, esp. modern poetry, as I think quite a few of his contemporaries did. He also doesn't engage in pointing out or even mention some of the philisophical fallicies I thought New Criticism loved so much. Again, perhaps Brooks might not be 100 percent typical of the school; I read this selection in conjunction with an assigned reading for 676: Critcal Methods, Ransom's "Criticism Inc." and found Ransom, another foundational New Critic, to be much more interested in dictating what is and isn't art and which art is best through a standardized method of inquiry modeled on science. Brooks, however, clearly distinguishes art from science (as well as from history and biography). I also like his definition of the poet as "maker," a definition that makes room for modern poetry where Ransom rights it off completely.
As my study at Syracuse taught me, New Criticism can be ripped to shreds from a number of theoretical angles; I won't engage in that here. I do have some problems with the theory, but I think studying it in this, an exclusively poetic context, has provided me a much greater understanding not only of what it says, but why that is. Reading Brooks has also demonstrated how it can be put to good use in the right hands.

When I first sat down to begin reading Brooks' book I thought that I was going to dread it. I thought this way because I have often been taught about New Criticism without having read a considerable amount of the criticism. That being said I was not surprised by what I found in the text. Brooks laid out a number of key ideas but there are two in particular that I want to draw attention to. The first key idea that I will discuss is Brooks' adherence to the idea of unity. The second key idea that I found throughout the text was that all great poems present readers with paradoxes.

Brooks' says of Wordsworth's "Ode" "The continunity between child and man is actually unbroken." Brooks' further invokes the idea of unity concerning the "Ode" when he connects Wordsworth with Yeats, "a comparison with several of Yeats's poems which deal with still another related theme: unity of being and the unifying power of the imagination" (148-9). Brooks' makes similar claims when discussing Keats' work, "If we can see that the assertions made in a poem are to be taken as part of an organic context, if we can resist the temptation to deal with them in isolation, then we may be willing to go on to deal with world-view, or 'philosophy,' or 'truth' of the poem as a whole in terms of its dramatic wholeness" (165-6). Unity or wholeness is a fundamental part of a great poem for Brooks because by looking at the poem as a whole and purely as a work of art as it appears completed on a printed page, one can more easily make assertions that poems mean certain things and not others.

Brooks' idea that poems can only have particular meanings leads me to my next key issue that being the idea that a great poem is paradoxical. For Brook's great poets write great poems because they embrace paradox in their poetry, which allows them to grant their poems an almost magical quality. What this idea allows Brooks' to do is to maintain a certain canon of poets because if a poet does not employ paradox, he can never be among the company of Milton, Wordsworth, Keats, etc.

So, in the end I found alot of things that I was told I would find when I read a piece of New Criticism. That being said I have to say I rather enjoyed reading the book, which greatly surprised me.

Dear all,

I am posting discussion questions on behalf of Kamal. Please spare some time and think about these issues.

C. Brooks' Well Wrought Urn is a study of poetry from Formalist point of view. The issues that he raises or discusses may not clique the mind of 21st century readers. However, one can not completely ignore or overlook them. Some of the issues and problems are still relevant even now.

Here are some points and questions that I would like to put forth for discussion.
1. Brooks says, "The language of poetry is the language of paradox.”Do you agree with him?

2. As Brooks remarks,“apparently the truth which the poet utters be approached only in terms of paradox”, but we can not comprehend poetry because we have a wrong notion of paradox for“Our prejudices force us to regard paradox as intellectual rather than emotional, clever rather than profound, rational rather than divinely irrational.”To prove his point, Brooks discusses at length Donne’s“Cannonization”,Wordsworth’s Immortality Ode and Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn. What is your opinion?

My understanding of Brooks is that paradox is an element of poetry that may resonate with readers (or listeners) in otherwise unremarkable poetry. Although the existence of paradox does not in itself make for a good poem (in concluding Chapter 7, he states that paradox may explain both the “virtues and weaknesses” of Wordsworth’s “Ode”), Brooks could have titled the book “Paradox In Poetry” as he seems very taken with it, at least in these chapters. I thought the strongest argument for the power of paradox was his brief statement about important insights as often given in paradoxical form (18).

About the title, I was guilty of thinking that “well wrought” (with no thought to “urn”) just represented a New Critic emphasizing perfection or some essential quality that can be found in works, so I was surprised that the title has a humble origin in the “Canonization.”

I like the possibility that a work can be separated from its author, so I liked that Brooks suggests that Wordsworth himself may not have been completely aware of everything his “Ode” communicates, and I certainly thought that Brooks (and Coleridge and Richards) would not hesitate to disagree with Wordsworth himself, could he be resurrected, on the meaning of the poem.