[Matt Q]

Originally Posted by R. Nemo Hill

Poetry can carry a message, sure, it often does so with great success; but it is, in essence, not that message.

Yup, so clunky, cliché-ridden, telly poem with the same message as Owen's wouldn't cut it. It's not what he's saying so much as it's how he's saying it. Which I think is pretty much what you said a few posts back.

I'll open a familiar can of worms here, but what the hell: poetry touches the soul. It's soul music. And once the soul has been touched, any message falls on far more fertile ground than if that mysterious receptivity is left out of the equation.

Oh no, he mentioned the 's' word. Quick, someone close the thread while there's still time ...

-Matt

[Roger Slater]

I agree with the "soul" part, though I'm not sure it clarifies matters very much, since a "soul" can presumably be touched by a message as well. Maybe one way of looking at it is by comparing poetry to other art forms. Rarely if ever do we look at a beautiful painting and look for (or find) a message. Nor do we listen to a symphony and feel a "message" in the ordinary sense. I think what we take away from both of them, and all art, is a sense of a shared human experience. We see through someone else's eyes, we experience someone else's mind at work, and we bond with another human being in a way that is more intimate than we otherwise experience with people we are not personally close to. So if a successful poem has a message, it's a poem not because of the message but because we get to experience what it's like to be the person formulating the message and wishing to share it and needing or wanting to convey it, and at the end we are convinced not of the message but of the genuineness of the artist's expression of it. And that's also why a poem doesn't need a "message," since there are other ways an artist has to get us to step inside his shoes than by conveying a message.

[Allen Tice]

When one's views about the priority of art over sloganeering can be distorted into an empty slogan, it is clear that I erred in posting on this thread. Apologies to all.

[Julie Steiner]

I think we're using the word "ambiguity" a number of different ways in this conversation, which is...um...ambiguous.

When I say that a poem uses ambiguity, I mean that what to think and feel is ultimately left up to the reader (even if the author provides clues suggesting that he or she has a particular reading in mind).

However, I belatedly realize that ambiguity can also mean vagueness, abstruseness, and incomprehensibility. With few exceptions, I'm not too keen on poems like that.

There is a genre of nonsense verse called the amphigory: "a rigamarole with apparent meaning that proves to be meaningless." Some folks find Lewis Carroll's "Jaberwocky" delightful; I'm not one of them. I do, however, love some of Wendy Videlock's poems that I can't make heads or tails of. The difference for me is that "Jabberwocky" is ever-so-serious in tone (which, I realize, is part of the joke), while Wendy's nonsense is often giddy with magical joy. Personally, I find the latter experience far more enjoyable. Again, others' mileage may vary.

[Quincy Lehr]

There is, I suppose, a place for ambiguity in political poetry, broadly construed, but contra Allen's hints of red-baiting and the like, there's nothing oppressive about having a point of view and making it clear to the reader, which is not the same thing as didacticism or a lack of wit, subtlety, or interesting or compelling thought.(Though it can be--same as with any other subject of poetry.) As for the reader making up his/her own mind, absent coercion of the sort of which poems are usually incapable, the reader generally, by virtue of being a cogitating human being, will do so. My concerns here are an implicit notion in a few posts that conviction is anti-poetic and something that perhaps flows from the dominance of the lyric mode--a failure to recognize that poetry can, in fact, comment significantly on the news cycle when it engages its adrenal gland a bit. I see Irish poets like Sarah Clancy reading good poetry to massive demonstrations. I see politicians reacting to Kevin Higgins on that bugaboo, Twitter. (If a political poem pisses no one off, it is both a political and poetic failure.) Sure, there is some dreadful talking points $#!t out there getting play for reading like a versified leaflet one gets at a demo, but there are many, many poems that manage a cutting, public directness, too.

[Matt Q]

Hi Julie,

Originally Posted by Julie Steiner

He tells us that we can probably be persuaded to stop repeating it "with such high zest" ONLY if we, too, someday have the misfortune to witness the horrors of war firsthand, and to then be haunted by reliving them via PTSD, as he is.

I don't see the word "only" in the poem, nor does it seem to be implied (he also doesn't say "probably", he's very definite). He says: if you'd seen what I'd seen then you wouldn't preach war to children. This doesn't preclude other circumstances under which we'd cease to preach war (such as reading his poem, watching films, visiting the shell-shocked and the amputees). In the same way that "If you give me that pie I won't be hungry" doesn't preclude a sandwich filling me up too.

I don't see "if you'd seen what I'd seen" as paradoxical rhetorical device here. It seems to me that a standard construction with a straightforward meaning that's easily understood. Consider as a parallel the phrase "If I were you". If I were to subject that to any sort of rigorous analysis there are paradoxes (after all, if I were you, I'd be you, I wouldn't retain my previous beliefs about what you should do, I'd have yours!) nonetheless, the meaning, the intent, of the phrase is pretty clear.

A lot of his message, I'd say, is communicated in the imagery earlier in the poem and in the details he chooses to show us. This last part more clearly identifies his target and, taking a mallet, hammers his point home.

Generally speaking, a concept, statement or phrase is ambiguous if its intent, meaning or interpretation cannot be resolved. I'd say that in the case of this poem that's not the case; its pretty straightforward I think, so I say that it is not ambiguous. I'm not left thinking: "well, maybe he thinks this, maybe he thinks that, I don't know". Owen's intention, his message is unambiguous in this sense, I believe. I can accept it, deny or argue with it like any other political position, it may make be angry or sad or despondent, or even or furious at his defeatist, ant-war statements, but it would be hard to claim that I don't understand it. That's how it seems to me anyway.

best,

-Matt

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

[Julie Steiner]

Yeah, I guess my shouting ONLY didn't help my cause any. But I'm glad I did, because it prompted you to express your point so beautifully. I agree with all you say, except perhaps that poetic ambiguity leaves the reader unsure of the poet's intentions.

But for the sake of argument (that noblest of causes--gotta have arguments!), isn't the motive for Owen's use of "my friend" ambiguous? Isn't there at least a hint that his narrator might not sincerely regard as "my friend" someone who, from the safety of greater years and supposedly greater wisdom, urges young men like himself into such horrors? I think it's left up to the reader whether to take "my friend" as a genuine expression of fellowship and shared humanity, or as bitter condescension and irony. (I usually regard it as the former, but sometimes it looks like the latter to me.)

[Wintaka]

By merging conversations of quality with those of sense we risk turning poetry into a cottage industry of annotator wannabes trying to divine the meaning of cryptocrap.

Oh, wait...

-o-

[Julie Steiner]

Recent news that is perhaps relevant, perhaps not:
Gloomy Don McLean reveals meaning of 'American Pie'--and sells lyrics for $1.2 million
[Rotten headline-writing, by the way--what McLean actually said was that the original manuscript, with notes and deletions, would ‘divulge everything there is to divulge’--how cagey is that?]

Meanwhile, the identity of the "you" in Carly Simon's "You're So Vain" remains hotly debated, despite (because of?) decades of coy hints from Ms. Simon.

[Robert Pecotte]

My concerns here are an implicit notion in a few posts that conviction is anti-poetic and something that perhaps flows from the dominance of the lyric mode--a failure to recognize that poetry can, in fact, comment significantly on the news cycle when it engages its adrenal gland a bit.

I agree with Quincy. One can and out have convictions in life, even if you're a Poet. And it's quite natural, if you're a Poet, that some of your Poetry would reflect your convictions, even passionately. Then it comes down to the audience you are writing to/for...(and, of course, your skill)