Poetry as an Art Form

[TomG]

In a dictionary, poetry is the use of language in ways that stirs the feelings or imagination; and is usually associated with beauty, high-minded thought etc. I think that today there’s an abundance of messages that stir the feelings and maybe a poverty of messages that are high-minded, except for music, which may be the modern refuge of poetry. Well, we do have our music, and the for poets still living, there are David Whyte, Seamus Henney and others

Most messages we receive today are from a communications perspective; they want our buy-in. They are assaults on our selves. No wonder messages are avoided, or the safe sterile explanations of information and science are sought. Like battered children, we learn to survive by denying our feelings. The we, which we call the self, simply in not in information, data or explanations. If we are not careful, we may succeed in giving our selves entirely to something else, and the something else we give ourselves to might be science. We may seek to hide from the assaults of communication by disappearing into the robust and reproducible mechanistic explanations of science. There we can defend ourselves with weapons of short-attention spans. In our hearts, we can rest safely in the knowledge that no mechanistic can entirely describe us. We are not in such explanation, we are somewhere else--somewhere in unknown land. Each of our lives is valid and there is freedom there if we wish to exercise it.

I don’t agree that in modern times we seek to avoid work or have short attention spans. Poetry, by stirring the feelings uses what is already within us to connect the dots of our perceptions into explanations for ourselves. Every person has their own explanation of themselves, but in the science of modern times, explanations are ‘one-size fits all.’ The truth, the one and only truth, comes from outside. The truth is authoritative, and there always is somebody to tell us what the truth is. In modern times, why work when in just a moment there will be somebody to tell us what the truth is. Why pay attention when there may be little of value in the materials provided to us that helps us know the truths that are in us all. TRUTHS, not truth, since truth for us doesn’t come in one-size fits all. Take courage, take poetry. Take back our lives.

 

[darleneonfire]

I always consider poetry one of the most sublime art-forms, and its masters true artists. Mind you, there is allot of bad poetry produced, especially by would-be poets who inflict their mundane works upon us to read.

 

[tamarin]

Tom and Darlene, well said! Poetry will always be with us and great poetry inside us. For me it's always been power. A great poem can stagger you. Something tingles in the psyche. I can well remember Keats' When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be and Lampman's Heat in grade 8. Jeffers' Hurt Hawks in grade 9, Arnold's Dover Beach in grade 10, Wordsworth's Intimations of Immortality in grade 11 and Eliot's Wasteland in grade 12. All poems of power. If language was ever to possess the transformative magic we think it does it will first be found in poetry.

 

[marygaspe]

Tom and Darlene, well said! Poetry will always be with us and great poetry inside us. For me it's always been power. A great poem can stagger you. Something tingles in the psyche. I can well remember Keats' When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be and Lampman's Heat in grade 8. Jeffers' Hurt Hawks in grade 9, Arnold's Dover Beach in grade 10, Wordsworth's Intimations of Immortality in grade 11 and Eliot's Wasteland in grade 12. All poems of power. If language was ever to possess the transformative magic we think it does it will first be found in poetry.

That's very true. I am quite fond of Dylan Thomas myself. I like modern poetry better than older poetry, mostly because it seems more relevant to life today.

 

[marygaspe]

i'm a fan of poetry. i often find the older stuff is better. poetry from when people weren't writing it to make money.

I don't think anybody makes real money from poetry. It's not really about making money anyway, what artform is just for money?

 

[tamarin]

Mary, Thomas wrote some great ones. My favourite Fern Hill I've mentioned before.

 

[selfactivated]

Tom and Darlene, well said! Poetry will always be with us and great poetry inside us. For me it's always been power. A great poem can stagger you. Something tingles in the psyche. I can well remember Keats' When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be and Lampman's Heat in grade 8. Jeffers' Hurt Hawks in grade 9, Arnold's Dover Beach in grade 10, Wordsworth's Intimations of Immortality in grade 11 and Eliot's Wasteland in grade 12. All poems of power. If language was ever to possess the transformative magic we think it does it will first be found in poetry.

You have NO idea! Or maybe you do rhyming words contain power of spirit and nature

 

[tanakar]

I don't think anybody makes real money from poetry. It's not really about making money anyway, what artform is just for money?

Too bad. It does seem like a life of hardship for them though. It must take a great amount of dedication and talent to continue to create their poetry when so much of the world dosen't care.

 

[TomG]

O mighty Poetry! Dost thou lie so low?
Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils,
Shrunk to this little measure? Fare thee well.
I know not, moderns, what you intend,
Who else must be let blood, who else is rank.
If I myself, there is no hour so fit
As Poetry’s death's hour, nor no instrument
Of half that worth as those, your explanations, made rich
With the most noble words of all this world.
I do beseech ye, if you bear me hard,
Now, whilst your purpled measures do reek and smoke,
Fulfill your pleasure. Live a thousand years,
I shall not find myself so apt to die;
No place will please me so, no means of death,
As here by Poetry, and by you cut off,
The choice and master spirits of this age.

 

[tamarin]

Intriguing effort, Tom! Sonnet-like in its delivery and crafted with feet held fast in both the new and old. A hybrid. And with the sting and stubbornness expected of such a defence!

 

[TomG]

It is not my intent to mislead anybody. The words are a slightly adapted version of one of Anthony’s speeches from Julius Caesar. Somehow the idea of personifying poetry and then having it killed in modern times by explanations and measures appealed to me. And, it’s made even more appealing by placing the idea in the context of the betrayals and murders in Julius Caesar and using the words of the Bard to present the idea. No cheap parodies from me I hope.

The power of words: The parts of the brain where our language abilities reside are different from the parts where we attach feelings to things, and there are other p[arts of the brain that arbitrate between language, names, words etc. and feelings. The brain can attach feelings to words or not. Words are used in presentations of modern explanations, measurements and simple information, but no feeling, no power. Information is so meaningful that it has become a cliché, an enemy of itself. So meaningful that it has no meaning--and we have so much of it. Information, words but no power

According to the Irish legend of Fionn and the Salmon of Knowledge; Fionn studied poetry to escape his enemies (nobody would harm a poet in Ireland). Fionn inadvertently tasted a magic salmon that gave him all knowledge of everything. At that time he was given the name Fionn (Finn) and given the three gifts that would make him a great poet. The gifts were magic, great insight and the power of words. And in modern times we’ve settled for less—so much less. We’ve accepted a reality where nothing worthy is without a explanation that is based on robust reproducible abstract measurement models. And, how do we find what makes us ourselves, a society, a culture in such models? We’ve allowed the requirement of explanation to discard half of our what makes us ourselves. As humans we’ve thrown away our essential qualities and become mere mechanistic contrivances: clichés, so true we’re without truth, enemies of ourselves.

But least I continue to wax frothingly, the problem is not simply a modern one. From Robert Burton writing in the 1600’s; contained in ‘The Anatomy of Melancholy:’

“…Facinus in his fourth chapter gives some other reasons; Saturn and Mercury are dry planets: and Origanus assigns the same cause why Mercurialists are so poor…for that their president Mercury has no better fortune himself. The Destinies of old put poverty on him as a punishment; since when, poetry and beggary are gemelli, twin-born brats, inseparable companions;

And to this day is every scholar poor;
Gross gold from them runs headlong to the boor;…

Prosper Calenius in his book…Go to Bedlam and ask . Or if they [scholars] keep their wits, yet they are esteemed scrubs and fools by reason of their carriage; after seven years study;

Dumb as a statue, slow he stalks along,
And shakes with laughter, loud the gazing throng…”

Alas, poor poetry. And such has it always been. Though note how Burton in the 1600’s equates poetry, scholarship and knowledge. Note how Medieval truths were supported by classical references, myth and astrology. Note how Burton himself was a monumental scholar by our standards and included verse in most written works (as most all literate persons did in the times). So who was Burton who so mightily trashed scholarship and poetry while using poetry and scholarship to do it? An English cleric of course, a cleric during the early part of the Enlightenment. The fashion in truth changes, but things human are constant. The medievals had their rhetoric and we moderns have our science, but practitioners of things human inevitably become poets of sorts. Poor poetry is not so poor at all. Poetry expresses what makes us what we are.

 

[canadarocks]

O mighty Poetry! Dost thou lie so low?
Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils,
Shrunk to this little measure? Fare thee well.
I know not, moderns, what you intend,
Who else must be let blood, who else is rank.
If I myself, there is no hour so fit
As Poetry’s death's hour, nor no instrument
Of half that worth as those, your explanations, made rich
With the most noble words of all this world.
I do beseech ye, if you bear me hard,
Now, whilst your purpled measures do reek and smoke,
Fulfill your pleasure. Live a thousand years,
I shall not find myself so apt to die;
No place will please me so, no means of death,
As here by Poetry, and by you cut off,
The choice and master spirits of this age.

I think this could be re-written in modern English. The trend in so many amateurs to rely on 16th century words ruins, in my opinion, what could potentially be a good piece of work.

 

[westmanguy]

I enjoyed TomG's poem, howcome you have to bring the negatives out on it?

I think old english suits certain subjects of poetry, and modern English fits better for other subjects of poetry.

He is the artist, and you shouldn't be judging his creativity unless you are someone very knowledgable in poetry or may be a poet themselves.

 

[canadarocks]

I enjoyed TomG's poem, howcome you have to bring the negatives out on it?

I think old english suits certain subjects of poetry, and modern English fits better for other subjects of poetry.

He is the artist, and you shouldn't be judging his creativity unless you are someone very knowledgable in poetry or may be a poet themselves.

Indeed. I know that using archaic language is not a symbol of an artist, but an amateur.

 

[westmanguy]

Besides that your insulting his work as ametuer.

How about you provide us with some of your work to prove your a judge of creativity.

I only believe people involved in a creative area should judge that area.

 

[sanctus]

Besides that your insulting his work as ametuer.

How about you provide us with some of your work to prove your a judge of creativity.

I only believe people involved in a creative area should judge that area.

Fair enough. I agree with her 100%. I very much dislike the usage of archaic language in poetry written today. it is one of the two most prominent marks of an amateur, the second being a reliance on trite rhyme schemes.

 

[westmanguy]

I agree its probably amuteur behavior.

But unless we are poets ourselves who are we to judge their creativity?

 

[sanctus]

I agree its probably amuteur behavior.

But unless we are poets ourselves who are we to judge their creativity?

I can. I am a professional, published poet

 

[westmanguy]

Ok, then I accept your judgement as your involved with poetry.

But unless canadarocks tells me he is a poet, then I don't believe he should judge the work.

 

[sanctus]

Ok, then I accept your judgement as your involved with poetry.

But unless canadarocks tells me he is a poet, then I don't believe he should judge the work.

If you put something in a public forum, every reader has a right to judge the work. And "canadarocks" is a woman;-)