If you don’t want to try, that’s your business. There have been a number of posts here offering you the basics to ponder. If you prefer the artistic limits you’ve set for yourself, have at 'em.
I was looking for something that I could relate to. Something that would explain why
Impression of small animal carcass
Covered with blue bottles
is suddenly art now.
There’s lots of crap teenage poetry out there that is not angsty. A string of disjointed references, lots of “imagery”, big words thrown in everywhere. Why is that bad and this poem not?
I used to write poetry on a poetry message board, and s goes message boards, people would never say your writing was bad. Of course, I knew mine was horrible (but had no problem thrusting it upon the world ;)). So one day me and a friend (who was actually a good musician and wrote good poetry) got together and decided to post a poem my sister wrote when she was 12 to see what the response would be.
The cat sat on the mat
He had
An ugly hat
I said
“Get off my mat!
You fat ugly cat!”
Then he dropped dead
probably because I shot him
in the head.
Then I had him for tea with a bee.
I couldn’t believe they swallowed it. We had people telling us they related to the death of our cat. Telling us they “got” the imagery.
Not all poetry is good. Some of it is horseshit. It’s not that it requires some sort of artistic knowledge to “get”. It’s not that it’s “misunderstood”, and in case you didn’t get it from the OP, it is because it is HORSESHIT.
You can keep saying it’s horseshit but frankly I’m not seeing any more persuasively worded argument on your part as to why it is objectively bad poetry or not art than you are apparently seeing from me as to why I enjoy it.
Taste in poetry is extremely subjective. I don’t choose to say that this is a good poem, I choose to say that I enjoy it. Because I recognize that my experience of the poem is informed by my personal taste, previous experiences that would lead me to enjoy the imagery in the poem, my specific liking for poems that use posess a strong rhythm and a good verbal flow -for example I love how she uses the present tense, I feel that it gives the poem a sense of immediacy.
The stanza with the image of the dead cat and the blue bottles is contrasted against the earlier image of the cat surrounded by newborn kittens. In one the cat is the source of life through birth, in the other the cat, who the author seems to be identifying with, is both dead and giving of the stuff of life to the blue bottles - the flies that are feeding on it. I also really enjoy the assonance in the phrase “small animal carcass.” It has a good meaty sound to it.
Does that make it any clearer why I think those two lines are “art”? As if labeling something art is actually relevant to whether someone subjectively enjoys it or not anyway -since I was answering your question as to what I liked about the poem, not whether I thought it was art or whether I thought it was good. (I think anything done with intent to be is art, for the record. Whether it’s good or bad art is always another question. Heh.)
Now, the poem that you posted that your sister wrote does not appeal to me in the slightest (note I’m not saying it’s a bad poem.) It has a fairly simplistic rhyme scheme (though it does break out at the end), lousy scansion and doesn’t really seem to have anything particularly interesting to say. It’s still art. Juvenalia, what the hey. Got to start writing some time.
Not all poetry will ever be relevant to you. Some won’t become relevant until you’re older if at all (Dorothy Sayers said you ought to wait until you’re 50 to read Dante’s Inferno, which I am, because it did nothing for me at 19, surprise surprise!) But you can learn to look at what techniques and styles you like and dislike and if you must call things horseshit, you may better express (if you even care to) why it is that you think it’s horseshit. Because you don’t understand why it’s art is not a particularly strong argument to me.
I’m sure typing “Horseshit! Horseshit!” is much more fun than analysing why you don’t like this poem though. It’s such a lovely robust word. “Horseshit!” It rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?
I’m going to go eat dinner. Which won’t be horseshit. It sounds good but I bet it tastes bloody awful.
Take it up with Ezra Pound, honey. Sure, you’re entitled to your own opinion. But there’s no reason anybody else has to consider Mina Loy’s poetry horseshit just because you say so, any more than you have to consider it great art just because Ezra Pound said so.
And yeah, it was kind of snotty of you to ask Idlewild for a serious explanation of his/her response to the poem, and then just flip it off by repeating that you considered it horseshit.
And that’s why this is the pit and not CS.
IdleWild, I didn’t mean to sound abusive. But it is stuff like this;
Where something is obviously bad, yet people feel the need to defend it.
I don’t like it. I pretty much am of the same opinion as the OP. It is rather disjoint, and to me it has no rhythm. I see it just as another example of one of the fine arts that is obviously bad, yet critics swoon to it. “It’s so bad it’s good”.
See, I’ve been opening up and sharing my interpretation and reasons for liking the poem in good faith here. You know, putting some amount of thought and effort into my responses to you. But if you insist on reading me as if I’m defending it out of perversity -because I think it’s so good it’s bad, what the heck?- rather than as I said because I enjoy it for reasons I have now outlined at length it two posts, we’ve got… I dunno… not a lot of common ground on which to discuss this. I mean, apart from horseshit being a cool word to type a lot. That’s never going to get old. Horseshit!
Methinks that someone needs to learn that just stating over and over that something is bad just because they don’t enjoy it doesn’t actually make it bad.
It’s always been art. Art is not a value judgement. Wether it’s good art or bad art is a different issue, but one that is wholly subjective.
The simple answer is that the person reading both poems likes one, and doesn’t like the other. There isn’t any magical formula for determining wether any given work of art is good. It’s entirely down to how each individual reacts to it.
I’m guessing the reason people were being nice about the poem was because they figured it had been written by a twelve year old, so they were making allowances. I’m sure the fact that they were offering up their own efforts for criticism at the same time would also temper their comments. I’m never sure what stories like this are supposed to prove, anyway. “Ha ha, that poem you liked was written by a 12 year old!” So what? Tell it to this guy.
Sure, it could be because it’s horseshit. Or it could be because you’re an uncultured rube who wouldn’t know good poetry if it bit you right on your pentameter. Demonstrate for us why we should believe the former rather than the later. Why is it horseshit? How does it compare to other poems that aren’t horseshit? What’s the difference between the two? What, ultimatly, are the basis on which you’re determining the worthiness of any poem? Simply saying, “It’s horseshit!” doesn’t tell us anything other than the fact that you, personally, didn’t like the poem. Nobody cares if you liked it. Everyone has an opinion, show us why your opinion is worth listening to. Tell us why you liked it. You aren’t going to change anyone’s opinion, obviously, but at least we might be able to wring a decent discussion out of it.
If it’s so obviously and objectively bad, presumably you can explain why, in terms no reasonable person could object to, and which not only completely trump their claimed personal enjoyment, but furthermore prove that they are in fact only defending the poem out of some weird and perverse desire to be contrary.
I must say, I’m relieved, incidentally; I’ve been waiting a long time for someone to bring objectivity to art, and now finally we have you. Hopefully we can move on to why hip-hop isn’t really music, once we’ve dismissed the Futurists.
It’s horseshit because I don’t like it.
Why don’t I like it? I just don’t. It might have nothing to do with me being “uncultured”. It is an opinion. I never said Idlewild couldn’t like it, I just don’t see his (her?) interpretation. I was not forcing my opinion upon everyone forcing them to also think it was horseshit. I am not attempting to make anyone else think it’s bad.
Why is my opinion suddenly more important than everyone else’s in the thread who has also said that they didn’t like it? Is it because I attempted to find a reason to like it, (ie; by asking Idlewild) then didn’t?
All hail Go You Big Red Fire Engine, the final word on art in all its forms.
Um, your statements earlier in the thread certainly makes it seem otherwise.
If you have an alternate explanation for these statements, by all means, let it flow forth.
Because you appear to be the only one claiming that these people have their opinions because of some misguided attempt to actually gasp judge art on it’s merits and how they connect with it instead of dropping everything and agreeing with you that it’s horseshit.
Yeah, that’s pretty much it. You were the first one in this thread who asked for someone to back up their opinion, and now you’re getting all defensive because people are asking you to back up yours. What’s more, you’ve basically said that Idlewild is wrong for thinking the poem is any good, and have been highly dismissive of her reasons for doing so. Unsurprisingly, people are now treating your opinion about the poem in much the same manner you treated Idlewild’s. Gives you a bit of insight onto why people were nice about the poem your sister wrote, doesn’t it? You’ve also committed the cardinal sin in criticism of acting like your opinion is the objective truth. Now, not liking Mina Loy doesn’t make anyone stupid or uneducated or uncultured, or anything like that. Heck, based on the poem in the OP, I don’t much like her, either. But anyone who mistakes their subjective opinion for objective fact doesn’t know a damned thing about art.
Straight Dope Web site
are a poet narcissistic without regret, without regret, without
a bout with blue bottles Epicurean
And booklyn.
Find all about how her
poetry, till seen bad in both back
in verse? completely
right, That I know all
knowing All posts
by jjimm ,
Marx Gorillas secretly
hate bad poetry like
the Chicago Reader, Inc.,
Created Via Poetry Generator on this thread
-Obviously non-poesy stuff like #of posts and user locations filtered out manually.
Again, I wanted to know Idlewild’s opinion, so that I could perhaps understand the poem better. I didn’t understand it any better. Hell, I don’t have an informed opinion, hence, me asking idlewild who seemed very interested in the subject.
A better way to phrase my opinion would be that I see nothing to like about the poem. I was looking for something to like, and failed.
People seem to think my first post to idlewild had the purpose of setting up the second. It didn’t. I was interested in their opinion, and even when given that opinion, the poem still seemed a tad stupid. But hey, then it was Engine pile-on time, and who am I not to aggressively post?
Well then in that case, I apologise for putting my words in such a way that it seemed I was putting my opinion across as the objective truth. I did not mean to do so. I guess I will have to put the words “IMHO” and “I think” in a lot more of my posts. I however, still don’t get what the former part of this quote means.
Fair enough.
That’s actually damn good.
I think poetry is probably the most difficult of the written art forms. I have a very hard time with it and consequently, don’t often enjoy it. I’m one of those people who does better with it in a group than on my own. I enjoy listening to people discuss it.
When you get a group of people who DO get it and can articulate it the way Idlewild did, you can begin develop an appreciation for it as an art form. Now, that’s not to say that you always have to LIKE it…but you tend to stop saying things like “it’s not art” or “this is horseshit.”
If you have an interest in poetry, you might benefit from taking a class that will teach you how to spot the techniques and styles. You can compare one artist to another and will understand why you like or dislike a particular poet. It appears from your posts that you really have no idea why this poem rubs you the wrong way. Some learned exposure to this art form might give you some insight.
Yeah, even quasi-random stuff will stick out a pretty bit for our perusal now and then. We are pattern seeking creatures after all. A decent piece of poetry should, at a minimum, rise above that noise in some discernible way. As far as I can tell, the poem in the OP doesn’t do that, but I may be missing some crucial bit of cultural context in my reading.
Ahem.
lying in the road
on a cold frosty morning
steaming with its inner heat
in the rosy half-light
crepuscular
effulgent
looking like warm buns of earthen brown
odorous but not miasmic
moist and slightly sticky
but broken open
revealing fibrous structure;
the grave of grass
while in the distance
the clop-clop of hooves
fading
diminuendo
metal shoes on metalled road
the bucket and shovel
garner the precious bounty
for the compost heap
and a new harvest.
Thank you, thank you.
Beautiful AND hilarious! Bravo!!
Brilliant.