I found the Oakeshott excerpt very interesting, Humble Servant. His take is refreshing. (It seems I have yet another book to buy.) Also, the link led me to the originator of the “unending conversation” idea, which I’ve always found fascinating though I never knew where it came from. Nice to finally know that. Thanks.
Can we have exhausted the knowledge or opinions of Dopers on poetry already, do you think? Disappointing, if so.
Here’s Wislawa Szymborska’s take: Some Like Poetry.
Oakeshott’s bidness is philosophy rather than poetry, so he’s systematic, but less pithy than some of the poets quoted.
Larry–what do you think of Pound generally? Pound, I think, may be due for a retrospective. I can remember, in school in the '80s, that there was a stigma, a sneer, for Pound as a fascist weirdo (which he actually was, IIRC). With the Cold War/European fascism pretty well past now, perhaps we have enough distance to be able to divorce his personality/politics from his work–that’s what occurred to me when I thought about him after reading your post: wasn’t he a fascist, and isn’t that rather a moot point now?
Anyway, I don’t know what to suggest to pump up this thread, except maybe to suggest we throw in a coupla ninjas.
Humble servant, He was a fascist and something of an anti-semite who did propoganda for Mussolini during WW2. He beat a treason charge with an insanity defense, but I don’t know enough about him to know whether he was really nuts or if he copped a plea. He brings up the question; how do you separate the life and art of a person who was a great artist( which Pound was) but a nasty individual. That seems like another thread though; probably suited for GD.
I’m not sure what inspired me to post that quote, maybe just that what strikes me about poetry is that while prose can be mediocre in form but make up for that with ideas or story, Poetry lives or dies by style.
Because You Asked About the Line Between Prose and Poetry
Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle
That while you watched turned into pieces of snow
Riding a gradient invisible
From silver aslant to random, white, and slow.
There came a moment that you couldn’t tell.
And then they clearly flew instead of fell.
- Howard NemerovAsk and ye shall receive: poem by ninja Toshitsugu Takamatsu. Also, Basho’s father was apparently a low-level samurai. Does that count?
Hmmm, Larry, I’m not sure I agree that poetry lives or dies by style … of course, I seem to have attached negative connotations to the word ‘style’. If by style you mean that the words of a poem are charged with an immediate tension or energy, a dangerous or imminent feel, then I agree.
I also believe that Pound’s poetry is often overlooked these days for the reasons you and HS have mentioned.
For myself? I separate Pound the man from the work. Got to. He’s integral to everything that’s happened to poetry since the early 20th century. If I start pulling his threads out, I find that it all begins to unravel. Because besides his poetry, the man’s poetics, the man’s thoughts about what poetry was and should be are reflected in everything since. He revitalized Yeats – went to Britain, buttonholed Yeats, and by force of intellectual and personal energy made him rethink and rework his entire oeuvre. He edited Eliot. Hell, he edited everyone. He fulminated and frothed and encouraged and energized.
And, finally, Robert Bly had little good to say about Pound’s poetry, or Eliot’s, for that matter – to me that’s a substantial indication that I should trust my opinion of Pound’s worth, and rethink my opinion of Eliot’s (which, in fact, I’ve begun to do as a result of a recent thread).
Heh. Enough foaming at the mouth by me, for now. I need some sleep.
Hah! An authentic ninja poem. The pop culture ninja (drenched in blood, speedy quick, with mysterious weapons and a mystic approach to the world) seems like a good symbol for use in poetry too–I just bet someone out there has done it.
Maybe we should do a Pound thread–I don’t know much about his place in “the history of poetry.” Or maybe something about this Robert Bly person.
Dizzy–love the Nemerov–do you know if he meant it to be a comment on the line between poetry or prose or did you just find it to be apt? I agree that it certainly is apt, and lovely.
Yeah, a google search turns up some stuff with ninjas in it. Nothing particularly good, though – by which I mean nothing fresh and exciting. It might be because the ninja as a symbol carries such a strong charge of its own that it would be very difficult to subvert that symbol to a poem. Hmmm.
I’d like to see a Pound thread. I’m not sure Bly is worth any toll on the hamsters, but I’d participate.
This is a poem.
http://www.fanfiction.net/read.php?storyid=1310740
This is a poem.
http://www.poetry.com/Publications/display.asp?ID=P4904769&BN=999&PN=1
But is this a poem?
incantation
Vebbery vebbery mickenelliz minaba minaba turavee bevv
Jelliqi jelliqi riobatidd tufua lofua mifulamizz
Rakkenex rakkenex perreradel ammini ammini likhotiraz
Limminer limminer sokatakob erriwell pevinell vauliyinar
Billico billico jexcirellid marrime marrime pelluniscid
Tebberon tebberon revelliynod pelvetomn morremomn gittiba salb
Zorebass zorebass belk amarid maullinie maullinie likkaversid
Thaubeline thaubeline wenivermet kassiden lammisen deirilli maz
Vebbery vebbery mickenelliz paretine massedine hallerimiz
PS-all mine.
Er, it sounds to me like a list of pharmaceutical brand names, qwanderer. I guess I could fit my idea of poem around it. It’s not particularly to my taste, though. I do like how you played with the words ‘bend’, ‘stretch’ and 'string/strung/strong in The Bow and the String.
Here’s an Incantation by Czeslaw Milosz. Is it a poem?