I think it is terribly presumptious of you to decide that the way the rest of us “should” enjoy art is the way you enjoy art. For some of us, the mental exploration of something leads to a much clearer and intense enjoyment than the simple emotional kick that comes with initial exposure to something. There is nothing wriong with prefering a non-cognitive approach to art, but there is nothing wrong with a cognitive approach, either. I won’t denigrate your hobby if you don’t denigrate mine. I will tell you, however, that artists themselves are split on the issue of analyis; I dont think you can look at Paradise Lost or The Wasteland or Moby Dick (to jump genres) and say “I was only supposed to get out of this that which was obvious on the initial reading with no extra cognition”.
Free verse can be an expressive tool. In my experience though, careless hacks often use free verse to justify incoherence and pointless meandering.
So yes, free verse has become popular. Unfortunately, its very nature lends itself to rampant abuse.
I don’t know why people are intent on reading into what I write some things that are not there. It shows that I’d never be a good writer, I guess. Didn’t I refer to “the Snowy Woods” as a poem with a deeper meaning? My “analysis” was to the structure (meter, etc.) of the poem. The OP asked, in effect, what constitutes a poem? I, too, enjoy reading into poetry. I enjoy the cognitive approach. But I don’t read a poem to analyse its metric system, at least initially. After I gleaned all I can from the poem, if that be my wont and hobby, which it isn’t, I’m sure that I would look further into the structure. For most of us, that is not the beauty of a poem.
I agree with Jubilation that “free verse” has been terribly abused. Note my reference to writing gibberish and calling it poetry.
Johnny Angel, I would disagree with your interpretation of what I said.
Escher, fo course, used perspective to create geometrically impossible worlds, none-the-less physically impossible ones. He did far more than create topological oddities like Klein Bottles or Mobius Strips.
A more useful analogy to rhyme and meter might be this.
Paintings need to be on either canvas or wood, and this piece of canvas or wood whould have the following dimension {lists (w,h) sets}.
Books pages must be of a specific size and have a set number of chapters corresponding to a plot-style {lists set of (plot,length)}.
Clearly both of these are pretty absurd. In fact, any restriction on how a painting should be created or how a novel should be written (apart from the examples I gave, of course) would not suit much of anyone. There may be specific restrictions (for example, a rigidly defined short story or what some call cubism) but this does not limit all stories or paintings.
As well, if one isn’t into hard determinism then even the much-scoffed “random” art will find beauty to some people. Chaos theory has a number of proponents.I have a high regard for a good free verse poem, but one of my favorite poets is (gasp) Emily Dickenson.
I have yet to hear “The Yellow Rose of Texas” and I never plan to. Sometimes, ignorance is bliss. 
Barbitu8:
It was the repeated use of phrases like “you, the reader, should not analyse it,”; “You can analyse a poem by Keats . . .but that is a self-destroying approach to poetry” and " But you, the reader, should . . . experience them." that set me off. This is pretty damn imperitive phrasing. In your last post, you shifted to the pronoun “I”, which is much more acceptable.
Which “most of us” are you qualified to speak for?
This, of course, was not your initial claim. I don’t think anyone reads a poem with the ultimate goal of analyzing the metre for anything other than pedagogical purposes. To argue that someone should not read a poem solely to analyze the metre is a straw man.
There is no mutual exclusivity between enjoying a poem for its visceral effects and parsing it for its craft. To argue otherwise appears to be a shallow, anti-intellectual approach to reading poetry, and does justice neither to the works nor the authors.
MR
If I might weigh in (and please excuse typos; the heat pump is dead and it’s damned cold in here): from my understanding in my far-too-many years as an English major, rhyming poetry stems from the same source as English grammar. Back a few hundred years ago, English speaking writers wrote in Latin. To use the vulgate for poetry was to be a hack (see Shakespeare). Anyone who’s studied latinate languages knows that they’re easy to rhyme; many words end in vowels, after all. However, English speakers have a basically Germanic language with a latinate grammar–hence the confusion for ESL students–and rhyme is forced. Eventually, poets decided that the message was more important than form, and we reached a point where poetry became readable.
Blame the rhyme on snobs who thought that Latin was better than English. Blame free-verse on the ones who came later who said that we’d work with our own idiom rather than a dead language. Also look at those who do well using both. And blame Susan Polis Schutz on the same idiots who think that anything with Fabio on the cover is great literature.
aynrandlover wrote:
How does this defend your claim that “Escher didn’t need Geometry to do a drawing”?
Your point is because you can come up with an analogy that doesn’t work, then none will?
Every medium of expression has restrictions. The paintbrush leaves the marks of its own structure. Stone cannot simply be cut any way and be expected to hold up just because the artist wants it to. And language, the medium of poetry, will always impose restrictions on the poet. A painter does not try to prevent the brush from leaving brushmarks; the painter learns to use the brushmarks to his advantage. The sculptor does not expect the stone to balance or hold together on its own; the sculptor designes his statue to accomplish the needs of the art and of the structure. And so the poet cannot expect the language to express the poet’s will unless the poet respects the strengths and limitations of the medium. Any poem in which the poet does not know where the meter falls is like a statue that is too thin in parts, so it breaks, and out of balance, so that it topples over. There are natural restrictions to the medium, and they must be respected.
If you’re afraid that hearing a song with the same stanza pattern as your favorite poem will ruin the poem, I suggest you stop listening to songs now. The 8/6/8/6 pattern which Dickenson favored is not all that rare.
My point exactly (which you didn’t respond to, I might add). Rhyme and meter are artificial restrictions to the English language, not natural restrictions. They were added, I reiterate, by snotty neo-classicists, not by the bases of the language. If you wonder why so much “traditional” poetry comes out like doggerel, read it again looking carefully at rhyme and line breaks. This is not to say that all formal poetry is doggerel, just that it lends itself to it, and it is to say that non-formal (formal in the sense of using form) poetry can be excellent poetry.
I’d like to see any refutation of the idea that form is a limitation of the English language rather than an artificial addition to the “rules.” Please provide citations. Otherwise, continue to speak out of your ass.
Slight hijack:
Pulitzer Prize winning fiction author and poet N. Scott Momaday visited my school a few years ago, and read several “prose poems.” What the heck is a “prose poem”? Some of what he read was beautiful, but I recall the so-called “prose poems” sounded like bad free verse. Since badly written free verse basically is prose with funny line breaks, maybe he decided to do without the funny line breaks and call it a “prose poem”?
Damn, I wish I had more than a few minutes to devote to this post. I will have to come back here. Now, then.
In reply to the OP – no, poetry does not have to rhyme.
Poetry is heightened language. Every word in a poem is working hard – each word is, at once, carrying its current dictionary definition, its vernacular meaning, and all of the associations it has gathered during its history of use.
Understand that I am referring to each word as it stands on its own.
When the words are welded into phrases, they work even harder, for they must do all this and carry the meaning of the phrase as well, which, in turn, must work at conveying its own meaning plus the meaning of the stanza in which it is imbedded. And so on, till the whole poem is built.
Poems are built, folks, piece-by-piece. And revised until they are freestanding structures.
I’ll be back. This thread is shaping up to be fun.
Forgive me for breaking in here, but I believe that Johnny Angel was using the term meter slightly loosely to refer to rhythm. (The two terms seem to be used interchangeably often, though they technically should not be.) All language does have rhythm, meaning a pattern of stressed and unstressed sylables. Meter refers specifically to ordered, repetative rhythm. I don’t think Johnny was claiming that all poems must have that, only that poets must be aware of rhythym and sound in the words they use, and use those aspects of the language constructively and deliberately, or they are writing prose, or exceptionally bad poetry.
Then I am a little surprised that you, as an English major, do not seem to be aware of native English metres. Before the so-called “snotty neo-classicists” got their hands on English literature. Here are some recommendations:
Beowulf
The Dream of the Rood
The Wayfarer
The Battle of Maldon
Caedmon
Please tell me that these masterpieces do not employ native English metre. Furnish your argument with some proof that there is no continuity between the English metrics of the 10th century and those of later poetry.
I can speak for ancient poetry here. A prose poem is one in which a conversational style and proasic vocabulary are maintained in addition to observance of the metre. The Satires of Horace are a perfect example. They are works of extremely light poetry that actually sound like conversation. They are works of extreme artifice: Horace manages to cast a perfectly unaffected conversation in perfect poetic metre.
MR
“Your point is because you can come up with an analogy that doesn’t work, then none will?”
Hardly. My point is that restriction is not in order at all for art, writing, poetry.
Now, come on…paint brush leaves its marking? So does the pencil on the paper the poet uses, this doesn’t all-of-a-sudden mean that the poet needs to rhyme or follow a regular pattern. That’s a conclusion I’d love to hear the reasoning behind.
From every writing class I’ve taken the importance of poetry is in its compactness. Every word means something (nothamlet said it well so I won’t reiterate).
Sure, as well, the sculptor must obey the laws of physics in order to make a statue, but that doesn’t mean the statue must be of a person and only of a person, or that statues of people must have swords at their left side or something equally absurd.
Claiming that poetry must be organized in such a manner as to create a syntactic pattern over a semantic one really, really defeats the purpose of writing at all. I will not disagree that a syntacticly and semantically ordered poem is bad; such a creation is usually very impressive. I will argue that only both syntactical and semantical order are required for poetry.
Consider the analogies you are trying to draw here. We have the sculptor burdened by physics…that is, his medium is stone and stone will naturally break if carved or chipped incorrectly. The corresponding medium for a poet is language. The natural restriction on language depends on the level of anality you would like to impose on it yourself. That is, you must ask yourself, “Is the purpose of language to express an idea?” If so, then syntactics is irrelevant so long as the idea is expressed. Perhaps, “Is the purpose of language to follow its own rules in order to express and idea?” In this case grammar must be followed, but not meter-patterns or rhyming.
The analogy ends here. If you could share why rhyming or metered patterns are necessary for a particular use of poetry then I will wait for you to fill in the blanks.
In the OP, both poetry and art are mentioned… I’m not sure what the original question was supposed to be. It could be: Is it (whatever) ‘art’?
That question has been argued endlessly.
Here’s my take:
My brother is an illustrator. He draws and paints extremely well, but what he is usually doing is capturing an image, just that. When his illustrations draw one to thought, move one to feel, or make you worry at the subject long after you step away from the ‘object’ of it, then he has slipped over from illustration to art. Art affects you in some way other than ‘gee, ain’t that pretty’. Photography isn’t always art, writing isn’t always art, sculpture isn’t always art, and a well-constructed verse isn’t always art - it may be fascinating construction, even awe-inspiring, but construction method doesn’t make art, nor does it break it. Some writing is closer to illustration than art, in that sense - pretty, but not likely to stick with you. Some poetry, the same. Your reaction to it makes it art. The reactions of people who are well-educated in the subject are what gives a painting or poem a ‘classification’ as art, even if any given individual doesn’t agree. The quality and complexity of the reactions make it good art, or so-so art, or great art.
OTOH, the OP could be asking: Is an attempt at art without training or ‘traditional’ technique still ‘art’?
In which case, my reply is: Maybe. Chances are that you’ll have better luck in the long run (and across multiple offerings) with some training and technique, even if in certain cases you choose not to apply them or you apply them in restricted form. The skills you develop to apply to the object can certainly hone what you produce into something more likely to be seen as art by more people. But you can still produce a work that moves and challenges without those skills/methods - heck, you can create one in spite of really poor methods. And you can create utter cr*p using ‘proper’ methods. It is still going to end up in the eye of the beholder, and in the opinion of those who spend a lot of time around such things (and hence have a broader base for their opinions).
And what, is nobody going to use the tired old definition of poetry being ‘painting with words’?
Responding to and clarifying a couple of points from above.
I’m surprised I’m the first to point this out, but the vast majority of Shakespeare doesn’t rhyme either. He sometimes closes soliloquies with a rhyme, to put a “button” on it or demonstrate a character trait, and sometimes he employed specific poetic forms within the plays (the famous sonnet between Romeo and Juliet on their first meeting, for example), but the overwhelming majority of Shakespeare’s verse is blank, i.e. nonrhyming. A few samples follow. (These are from memory, so sorry if I miss something.)
This is the beginning of Richard III. No rhymes there. But then look at the end of the speech (I’m skipping quite a bit):
Ditto for Hamlet’s most famous speeches:
I could go on like this. Suffice to say, most of Shakespeare doesn’t rhyme, but when he does, there’s a reason for it.
And that leads me to address another point being debated, about the analysis of verse. The meaning of Shakespeare’s language becomes apparently only through careful metrical analysis; a “holistic overview” approach will miss the majority of what he’s doing. To take the famous “to be or not to be” speech above, look at the rhythmic count of the first few lines. Iambic pentameter is ten syllables, but the first five lines all have eleven. Why? Why is the pattern broken? Shakespeare isn’t just sloppy; he’s telling the actor that Hamlet’s brain is working overtime, that he’s got so many thoughts roaring around, competing for attention, that they “spill over” the formal boundaries of his means of expression. It’s a direction to the actor, pure and simple. (This is, I think, why many people don’t like reading Shakespeare on the page, like a book, because elements like this get missed, and it turns into word goulash, dull and incomprehensible. Shakespeare is meant to be read aloud, to be performed. Anyway, that’s a different thread.)
Moving on…
I suspect this is a “cute” simplification, but for the benefit of readers who haven’t thought deeply about Picasso’s work, here’s a bit of discussion. To say Picasso disregarded or “didn’t need” perspective is at best a willful distortion, at worst simply wrong. Picasso’s cubist period (which lasted only a few years, contrary to popular misconceptions about his work) was very much about perspective, and about reimagining how two-dimensional artwork could represent three-dimensional forms. Instead of flattening a real-world object for reproduction, he and Bracque and other painters working in this mode were attempting to show more than one side simultaneously, to in effect take the viewer on a “tour” around an object, but then to present that tour in a static, flat form. Rather a radical idea, and hard to get one’s brain around. It’s also only intermittently successful, so it’s no surprise Picasso and others went on to explore other areas. Most people also aren’t aware that Picasso was a hell of a draftsman, that he was perfectly capable of producing outstandingly “realistic” (read conventional) drawings of people or whatever. He didn’t draw those weird pictures because he “couldn’t draw realistically” – he just chose to push the envelope.
Also from aynrandlover:
You had me until this sentence. I would argue that instead of “order,” the word “awareness” be substituted. Shakespeare, as noted above, frequently breaks his own rules, always with a specific purpose in mind. His language doesn’t always go ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM. The first line of Romeo and Juliet, for example, is “Two households, both alike in dignity,” which scans as DUM DUM-ba, DUM ba-DUM ba DUM-ba-DUM. Six strong stresses instead of five, simply by taking the first syllable, which in the metrical form should be weak, and making it strong instead. A perfect choice for the first line of a play, a strong introduction by the Prologue to silence the muttering and still the fidgeting of the waiting audience. The extreme form of e e cummings has a similar function, just taken to the nth degree. Real creativity, I would argue, isn’t in following a formalism, but is rooted in a conscious awareness of the formalism that allows you to violate and expand upon it in intelligent, original ways.
And that takes me to this:
I’d suggest you actually study the history and development of modern art before you try dissing it. I know, it’s fashionable to talk about beret-wearing bohemians latching onto the latest-and-greatest weird art trend, and whenever we get something like that four-year-old girl’s painting “Trees” being sold for hundreds of dollars or another exhibition turning out to have been painted by an elephant, the mainstream press always jumps all over it, using it to show how “out of touch” the “art fags” are. And these days, it’s easy to point at the work of Rothko or Pollock or Kandinsky and say, look, it’s just a solid red canvas, or it’s a squiggly mess with a few pebbles stuck to it, or it’s a bunch of random shapes and patterns that doesn’t look like anything.
But I would seriously advise you to take the time to look at the context in which these artists did their work, to see what they were reacting against. They weren’t trying to create art for consumption, like Thomas Kinkade, the Painter of Blank Checks; no, they were trying to make people think about What Art Is. Magritte is obviously an artist, because even if his paintings are very strange (a train coming out of a fireplace? a naked woman whose lower half appears to be turning into wood grain?), the imagery being utilized is clear and readable, and the subject of his deconstruction is obvious. Sure, he can be a little more subtle (his series of easels that seamlessly reproduce the background, or the famous “this is not a pipe”), but even then, what he’s getting at can be grasped after a few seconds of thought and consideration.
But Kandinsky? Malevich? Their paintings don’t seem to be of anything; at first viewing, they look like random shapes and colors. But think about that for a moment. Why would these be offered as art? Even if the “meaning” isn’t obvious to you at a quick glance, why would their work be so respected? Think about the human mind’s irrepressible habit of seeking patterns, synthesizing visual stimuli, forming an interpretation of what is presented to it. It’s this impulse that led the Egyptians to connect the rising of Sirius to the flooding of the Nile, and it’s this impulse that these artists are exploiting. Cave painters from tens of thousands of years ago discovered they could create simplistic representations of animals and people, and thereby capture an abstract impression of real events. That’s one of the uniquenesses of the human mind, the ability to make this leap. The work of abstract painters (and sculptors, and poets, and playwrights, and musicians) is about stretching this ability into new areas, to see what else we can do, to give the brain a nonrepresentational image (or phrase or sound or action), and see what creative interpretive leaps might arise.
If you don’t get anything out of Rothko, even after making all of this effort, then that’s fine, that’s your artistic and aesthetic preference. But don’t let your own views lead you to dismiss his general significance, because it just makes you look ignorant.
Cervaise
ummm…I understood what “cubism” is alright, it was meant to be a simple analogy. I did re-expressmyself better later. But still, there would be no complete vanishing point in a cubist painting, and so perspective is gone. For you to put it there is to defeat cubism…that is, you are using reductionism to view what might be termed a holistic painting.
As well, I would argue against the necessity for both syntactic and semantic order in a poem. I left the “against” out and makes it seem like I just debased everything I’ve been saying the whole time.
I just don’t see that “ring around the rosey” is any poetically better than Ann Sexton’s “The Moss of His Skin” or Frost’s Birches or whatever its called (never liked Frost but that one was alright).
Your clarification of awareness over order is fine…that is, if a poet chooses to use structured meter in an attempt to put extra levels of meaning into a poem or poem-like prose, so be it. But I found Hamlet to be just as inspiring now…in fact, the points you make don’t make me give a god-damn more about the story or the feelings I get from it but instead increase my respect for Will’s abilities.
Now, you do note that the beauty of a poem isn’t in the formation itself, but in the use of the formation. Now now, tsk tsk. This is like saying Bach’s structure-shift were brilliance, which they were, but it was those structure shifts themselves which lent the piece beauty, which it wasn’t. Or have I misinterpreted you?
Basically, what I seem to be asking everyone, is what the hell seperates a poem from a song? The vocalist? :rolleyes:
And yes, I don’t think songs need to rhyme either since I’ve heard some fine ones which don’t (and you don’t realize they don’t until you stop to think about it).
Perhaps I should have been more clear: I was speaking of artificial metrics. Yes, the English language is often iambic, but the discarding of the occasional trochee in order to force the meter also forces the language, which did not often happen prior to around the 18th century in my experience. As to your examples, in the original early- or middle-English we’re discussing what is almost a different language, unless you’re looking at translations, in which case the leg you’re standing on just fell out from under you. However, I stand by my point that in English metrics and rhyme are artificial and enforced by a reactionary aesthetics, just as the 5-7-5 haiku most of us are taught in grade school are inapplicable to the actual intent and meaning of haiku.
Ok, I totally agree that forcing English into dactyllic hexameters is both torturous and reactionary. The problem begins with the application of quantitative meters to stress.
Your statement sounded much more categorical to me, however.
Though Old and Middle English are extremely different from modern English, I am not convinced that there is no poetic continuity.