Blog320

Blog320 Daily Notes on Poetry & Related Matters

17 December 2004. A new version of yesterday's attempt at a poem:

Yet Another Poem About Poetry

It takes no special gift to build a line
or two in meter, such as these of mine;
it's much more tricky pinning rhymes to them
for which your readers will not you condemn.

But none of the height
of poems at their best
has anything to do with rhyme or meter.
That blossoms out of wheres,
wheres rich and wrong enough
to slow one's senses into
sun-splashed wonderments worlds away
from the long-sung-inert, flat layer
that received reality
so dismally is.

This is getting better, I think, but has a way to go. (I just changed the second line of the second stanza, by the way. It was "It results from wheres." Then, I changed "It isn't hard" to "It takes no special gift" to try to counter its prosaicness at least a little. No sooner having written what I just did, and looking at the poem again, I "into/ sun-splashed wonderments." Too much gaud? I dunno.

Meanwhile, I continue disucussing poetry at New-Poetry (close to one-sidedly, hardly anyone but I posting anything of length except Marcus, who has already elapsed into his verosopathy mode). Thinking about the history of poetry in English, I wrote, "My impression is that poetry in English was for centuries what I call "repenemical," or having rhyme of some sort, if we loosely consider (for the sake of this discussion only) alliteration and the like to be rhyming. So, using stasguard reasoning, according to which tradition rules, however stultified and illogical, poetry ought to consist only of metered texts which also possess rhyme or the equivalent. Blank verse should not count, because it didn't come into English until 1540, according to the Princeton Dictionary.

"Also, while meter is natural (I'm almost certain we're wired to speak rhythmically), repenemicry is not, so mere meter is more prose-related than rhymes and the equivalent. Certainly, blank verse is a step toward free verse.

"While on the subject, I think it might shed light on why poets use free verse to consider why blank verse came into use. The Princeton says Surrey introduced it with a translation of the Aeneid. It would seem to me that he did so mainly because it was, as the stasguards contend, easier. Rhyming is hard in English, fresh rhymes near-impossible to find for poems of any length, at all, or became so once a semi-substantial body of rhymed work existed in English.

"I believe, however, that blank verse had its real beginning, its formidable beginning, in English Drama, and I think it took over there not only because it was easier than rhymed verse but because rhymes muffled drama. A spectator could flow with a playwright's meter AND focusedly empathize with his characters' plights but rhymes would distract him from the latter--at least after a while. So, a main reason for blank verse, and--later--for free verse, is to unmuffle other effects. To feel unornamented. This is a strong motive behind the use of free verse, as well. I believe a poet needs to tell the members of his audience that they are in a poem. The question is, how emphatically should he tell them? If you only have rhymed metrical verse, you will eventually tell them too overtly, so you drop rhyme; if you only have metrical verse, you will eventually tell them too overtly, so will drop meter.

"The advantage is that once a text can declare that it is a poem without meter, its having meter will again become fresh."

In a separate post, I began a list of the differences between prose and poetry:

1. for me, the biggest difference between what I call poetry and prose is that poetry uses (and emphasizes) figurative language to evoke physical and emotional ambiences whereas prose mostly uses figurative language to explain, and uses it for any reason less than poetry does.

2. lineation (and the equivalent "flow-breaks," I speak of in my taxonomy) which poetry has, prose doesn't

3. meter, which SOME poetry has, but prose doesn't (to any significant extent).

4. repenemicry, or alliteration, rhyme, assonance, etc., which poetry has to a much greater extent than prose

5. narrativeness, which seems to me ALL literary prose (which, for me, excludes essays) has (am I wrong?), but poetry needn't have, and less and less commonly does have.

6. the use of slant language, which poetry has to a greater degree than prose--or intentional unclarity for aesthetic effect

7. poetry emphasizes sensual pleasure (via imagery), prose what I call anthroceptual pleasure--psychological/social/people-oriented pleasure.

8. Ideas are more important in literary prose than in poetry (though I consider them necessarily secondary in both).

9. much more important for a poem than what it says is what it is, but the principle importance of prose is not what it is but what it says.

10. the connotation/denotation ratio is much greater in poetry than in prose.

11. I'm sure there are more. Anyone willing to add to the list? Or combine items on the list so far that say about the same thing, and my impression is that some may be there.

I don't think there's anything controversial on the list. Certainly, there's nothing original on it. Just a little oil for gearing up, I hope.

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