|
Notices |
It's been a while, Unregistered -- Welcome back to Eratosphere! |
|
|
09-17-2017, 12:26 PM
|
|
Member
|
|
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: a foothill of the Catskills
Posts: 968
|
|
Wonderful, Walter! I hear it. And those harmonies at the beginning of the 2nd movement are like chocolate mousse. And I love the Borges. TY.
|
09-17-2017, 02:44 PM
|
Member
|
|
Join Date: Apr 2003
Location: Arkansas, USA
Posts: 602
|
|
Michael and Walter--
Very cool observations, I love it. Thanks.
Mark
|
09-19-2017, 05:54 AM
|
Member
|
|
Join Date: Apr 2012
Location: Paris, France
Posts: 5,391
|
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ann Drysdale
What we have at funerals (Hamlet's baked meats) is seen to be far more important than the corpse ...
|
Although at cannibal funerals, the baked meats and the corpse are one and the same.
|
09-19-2017, 01:33 PM
|
|
Member
|
|
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Brooklyn, NY USA
Posts: 6,119
|
|
Brian, go to your room immediately without supper and finish up that double-spaced three-page report that was due on my desk last week explaining why the elements of water, fire, air and dirt explain the History of Modern Chemistry better than the inferior table of dozens of raw liquids, solids and gases that the sitting (2017) Archbishop of Canterbury used in his secular employment before enthronement.
Last edited by Allen Tice; 09-19-2017 at 01:36 PM.
|
09-22-2017, 12:22 PM
|
Member
|
|
Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: Taipei
Posts: 2,623
|
|
Excellent topic, Max. I'm sure I'm repeating myself, but it is the number one reason I post. And I used to view this as a simply technical matter. But I think it's a pretty core factor in what makes, or doesn't make something poetry. I like to allow a poem enough room to breathe possibilities. And it's also how a poet wants to address the reader--as someone more intimate, or are you doing roughly the equivalent of making a speech/giving a talk (not that those are always mutually exclusive)? I prefer the former, but obviously this can be a barrier to understanding. And, generally, I like poems that take unexpected leaps. It's the gaps that can make all the difference. I tend to do at least one of the above and then float the poem out there, see what happens. In my view, they are all essential risks. My quarter cent.
JB
Added: And, in many cases, probably not everyone should understand your poem (just like probably not everyone should like your poem).
Last edited by James Brancheau; 09-22-2017 at 12:36 PM.
|
09-23-2017, 10:28 AM
|
Member
|
|
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Sunnyvale, CA
Posts: 2,253
|
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by James Brancheau
I like to allow a poem enough room to breathe possibilities.
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael Ferris
I like indeterminacy of meaning but not obscurity.
|
Are these entirely in the mind of the beholder? Are there things a poem can do or avoid doing to breathe possibilities (a lovely term), to push itself toward indeterminacy rather than obscurity?
|
09-23-2017, 10:45 AM
|
Member
|
|
Join Date: May 2016
Location: Boston, MA
Posts: 2,044
|
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by James Brancheau
And, in many cases, probably not everyone should understand your poem (just like probably not everyone should like your poem).
|
This. A universally loved work is a bad poem; an entirely comprehensible one, ho hum.
|
09-23-2017, 11:24 AM
|
Member
|
|
Join Date: Mar 2017
Location: TX
Posts: 6,630
|
|
Max: Are there things a poem can do or avoid doing to breathe possibilities (a lovely term), to push itself toward indeterminacy rather than obscurity?
I was just teaching Rimbaud's "Au Cabaret-Vert", which ends on a ray of sunlight turning the poet's beer foam to gold. This is at once a painterly touch and a nod to alchemy, and that's a way to breathe possibilities without being obscure, which the poem isn't, particularly. I think here of Empson's Seven Types of Ambiguity.
Here's Rimbaud:
Au Cabaret-Vert
cinq heures du soir
Depuis huit jours, j'avais déchiré mes bottines
Aux cailloux des chemins. J'entrais à Charleroi.
− Au Cabaret-Vert : je demandai des tartines
De beurre et du jambon qui fût à moitié froid.
Bienheureux, j'allongeai les jambes sous la table
Verte : je contemplai les sujets très naïfs
De la tapisserie. − Et ce fut adorable,
Quand la fille aux tétons énormes, aux yeux vifs,
− Celle-là, ce n'est pas un baiser qui l'épeure ! −
Rieuse, m'apporta des tartines de beurre,
Du jambon tiède, dans un plat colorié,
Du jambon rose et blanc parfumé d'une gousse
D'ail, − et m'emplit la chope immense, avec sa mousse
Que dorait un rayon de soleil arriéré.
http://abardel.free.fr/petite_anthologie/au_cabaret.htm
Googling for the French, I found a Cabaret-Vert Hotel in Cambodia. Rimbaud would have liked that.
Last edited by John Isbell; 09-23-2017 at 11:27 AM.
|
09-23-2017, 11:55 AM
|
Member
|
|
Join Date: May 2016
Location: Staffordshire, England
Posts: 4,420
|
|
Quote:
A universally loved work is a bad poem
|
I can't agree with this, Andrew
|
09-23-2017, 12:07 PM
|
Member
|
|
Join Date: May 2016
Location: Boston, MA
Posts: 2,044
|
|
Fair enough, Mark. I'm not sure any poem that's worth anything is universally loved. Every great poem I can think of has detractors, even prominent ones. But perhaps there's no such thing as the platonic, universally beloved work in the first place.
For instance, Voltaire, Dryden, and George Bernard Shaw all had serious issues with Shakespeare, Dryden going so far as to revise and recast the originals at times to "improve" them.
|
|
|
Thread Tools |
|
Display Modes |
Linear Mode
|
Posting Rules
|
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts
HTML code is Off
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Member Login
Forum Statistics:
Forum Members: 8,399
Total Threads: 21,840
Total Posts: 270,801
There are 834 users
currently browsing forums.
Forum Sponsor:
|
|
|
|
|
|