[Roger Slater]

I propose we coin a new term, perhaps "Shmoem," which can cover all those things that free verse poets currently call "poems" as well as all those things that formal poets call "poems," thus eliminating pointless semantic debate and allowing us to focus on the merits or flaws of each individual shmoem we encounter.

[William A. Baurle]

Roger,

You seem to be agreeing with me on one hand and disagreeing on the other.

I agree that the semantic debate, ie "What is poetry", or "What is a poem?" is pointless. If a person makes a poem and calls it a poem, it's a poem, not a shmoem, whether you or I like it or not.

The discussion that merits attention is, like you say (and like I said), whether or not a poem is good or bad, whether it's a thing of value or a trifle not worth considering or spending too much time on.

Where the hell are the free verse poets who make up a big portion of what makes Eratosphere the site that it is?

I would like to hear from them as much as from the diehard formalists.

**Edited in: Roger, I imagine you were not being serious about your shmoem idea. I haven't lost my sense of humor quite yet.

[R. S. Gwynn]

I don't recall who attacked Keillor's Good Poems; maybe you can refresh my memory, but it really doesn't matter. "Good" when it's used as an adjective is always subjective--good food, good music, good wine, etc. There are all kinds of standards of taste that can be applied. The New Critics liked wit, wordplay, complicated metaphor, rhetorical skill, and all that, but very few contemporary critics hold to those standards. Which is to say, Bill, that I essentially agree that almost any verbal contraption can be called a poem, just as silence can be called music, just as any mixture of tints on a surface can be called a painting. But then when we get into, "Yeah, but is it a good poem?" we move into the realm of taste--one man's meat, one woman's poison. My own tastes are pretty limited; others' are far more catholic. Some are even more limited than mine; others' are far more catholic than others'. I do think that a century or so of hard experience should have told us that newness can't be equated with progress.

[R. S. Gwynn]

Oh yeah, you could read Stanley Fish on the "Is it a poem?" question, but you still wouldn't learn what a good poem is.

[William A. Baurle]

I do think that a century or so of hard experience should have told us that newness can't be equated with progress.

We definitely agree on that, Sam.

I hope I haven't implied that I think such a thing.

The poet who slammed "Good Poems" is August Kleinzahler. There was a thread about him hereabouts, which may be found in the archives? I posted this on that thread.

Onward!

`````````

I wonder if anyone can recall who wrote what many consider*** the first "free verse" poem in English. That would be William Blake, in his Marriage of Heaven and Hell

The poem:

The Argument.

Rintrah roars & shakes his fires in the burdend air;
Hungry clouds swag on the deep

Once meek, and in a perilous path,
The just man kept his course along
The vale of death.
Roses are planted where thorns grow.
And on the barren heath
Sing the honey bees.

Then the perilous path was planted:
And a river, and a spring
On every cliff and tomb;
And on the bleached bones
Red clay brought forth.

Till the villain left the paths of ease,
To walk in perilous paths, and drive
The just man into barren climes.

Now the sneaking serpent walks
In mild humility.
And the just man rages in the wilds
Where lions roam.

Rintrah roars & shakes his fires in the burdend air;
Hungry clouds swag on the deep.


***I recall reading that somewhere, but can't locate anything substantial.

For those who don't, or won't, click the link to the Blake article:

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is a must read for anyone seriously interested in the making of poems. Sam will notice I avoided the word 'poetry'. I am not exactly sure what he means by the distinction between poems and poetry. Unless it be that poems are to be treated as individuals, and that poetry is an abstraction, hence not a real entity?

I mentioned in another thread (Trump Watch) that I'm a nominalist, ie, I don't believe that universals exist as real things (meaning: actual entities. They are words and symbols only).

This is important, but not necessarily important insofar as this thread goes.

Won't at least one person defend that dreaded ratz a fratzin freakin silly little Wheelfreakinbarrow?

It's a huge poem. It's an English, and/or American form of Haiku.

[William A. Baurle]

Originally Posted by R. S. Gwynn

Oh yeah, you could read Stanley Fish on the "Is it a poem?" question, but you still wouldn't learn what a good poem is.

- emphasis mine.

I hope that 'you' up there doesn't refer to me, Sam.

Edited in:

Here's a relevant snippet from the Horse's* mouth:

Blake explains that,

"Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion,
Reason and Energy, Love and Hate are necessary to Human existence.
From these contraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil.
Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing
from Energy. Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell."

*I think that's what got me banned for eternity from PFFA. I referred to Blake's 'proverb':

"The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction." - I referred to a moderator there as a "Horse of Instruction". Big mistake.

One more edit:

To Fish, "ideas have no consequences."

- Wikipedia. Never heard of this Fish until now. Glad you alerted me to him. As John Whitworth might say, we need more lerts. I won't bother with this Fish's thoughts on poems and poetry.

[Andrew Szilvasy]

Sam,

I'd be happy to read your thoughts on the difference between poems and POETRY. It's a fascinating idea.

[R. S. Gwynn]

Andrew, it's just the difference between wanting to make good individual works ("poems") vs. writing as an accompaniment to grand schemes or ideas ("POETRY"). Lyric poets tend toward the former; epic poets toward the latter. Some are able to do both with celerity, but others aim too high for their talents. I think of Pound in this regard--good enough lyrical/satirical poet but no Homer.

[William A. Baurle]

I disagree, Sam. About Pound I mean. The Cantos are about as epic as it gets.

I am in total agreement about poems versus Poetry.

[Gregory Palmerino]

Originally Posted by William A. Baurle

Won't at least one person defend that dreaded ratz a fratzin freakin silly little Wheelfreakinbarrow? It's a huge poem. It's an English, and/or American form of Haiku.

XXII
from Spring and All (1923)[1]
so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.


Bill,
I’ll give it a shot. I don’t read Williams. In fact, if you put a gun to my head I couldn’t name another poem of his except this one and Patterson, and then there’s that one about plums; beyond that I’m clueless about WCW. But I do enjoy XXII. And I’ve enjoyed this thread.

I’m distilling some of what I have read from others and from my own enjoyment explicating poems. So here goes:

First, the whole poem is based on a philosophy of existentialism, which I think modernity, that is, individual liberty, secularism, subjectivity, et cetera, thrives on; in other words, the poem essentially says, The whole world depends upon how you, the individual, sees it. What could be more appealing to someone in 1923 (before the crash)?

In this way, the poem is not unlike other modern artwork and artists such as Picasso or Joyce. Hey, who wouldn’t want to read XXII instead of Finnegan’s Wake or avoid going cross-eyed looking at Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a Staircase”? The sophistication/abstraction of modernism and its guiding philosophy is boiled down into words and images that are accessible and acceptable to anyone. We should never forget how rural America was and in some ways still is for most of its history. Most of the United States did not have electricity until after WWII.

Second, I think the poem has become known as The Red Wheelbarrow because of this object’s reinforcement of my point above. “Wheelbarrow” is one word, but WCW makes it two in this poem. The enjambment puts the emphasis on the “wheel.” I don’t need to go into the historical significance of this human invention. However, the wheel and the wheelbarrow are symbolic of self-reliance, work, construction, et cetera that also reinforces my point above.

The word “barrow” is interesting for anyone living a rural existence because it is a burial mound. Think of any rural cemetery. By separating the words “wheel” and “barrow,” WCW gets to have his life in death all in two little lines of poetry:

a red wheel
barrow

Finally, the image of the rain and the white chickens, of course, are rural notions of the basic water and food of existence. They could have been anything, really, but the simplicity of “red” and “white,” “rain” and “chickens” reinforces a simplicity to modern art that we don’t get in the complicated expressions of modernism. In short, it’s appealing to just about anyone.

So there you go. I think I may have just started a first draft to my next essay. Thanks for the inspiration.

Cheers,
Greg

Adding a note: I think XXII could be Williams' "I Hear Modernity Singing."