[Richard Wakefield]

graywyvern:
I agree with your point about continuity among the various arts. One of my projects has been to look at some painters (especially Thomas Eakins and Edward Hopper) for the way their work uses styles that can be paralleled to what was going on it poetry in the same periods -- and to show that those styles are finally thematic.
I took the original question to be asking what is essential about poetry per se.
Richard

[RCL]

The old proverb defining proverbs seems to capture the emphasis Tim and Richard put on language as poetry's defining feature: "What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed."

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Ralph

[Tim Murphy]

Ralph's quote has it--with better compression than any prose could manage. Steve, by moral instruction I think the Chinese simply meant that the values expressed in the poem should be consonant with those of Confucius, Mencius, Lao-tse, Chuang Tzu. Certainly not that the poet legislates for anyone. Though it is true that in China the sole route to high office was literary examination.

Of our highest officeholder, Professor Mezey said "It's true that he said subliminable--twice. But he was distracted by executing a criminable." As a Yalie I cringe.

[Alder Ellis]

The pedant in me leaps forward reminding everyone that the "old proverb" is a line from Pope's Essay on Criticism:

True wit is nature to advantage dressed,
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed.

Which I have always regarded as a rather insufficient definition of what poetry is doing, perhaps mainly because it implies an absolute distinction between "thought" and "expression". Insofar as poetry takes you places you can't get to in any other way, it has a cognitive function. It is a different way of thinking, not just a different way of expressing.

On the other hand, there is also Emerson's famous pronouncement: "In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty."

SW >> It sounds not unlike a Shelleyan unacknowledged legislator to me. Poets are not sages or gurus, in my opinion, they're just ordinary human beings. . . who might possibly be able to notice a few things others don't, or at least don't feel the need to share. <<

Yes, but what Shelley is arguably talking about is not the poet personally but the poet as vehicle for inspiration. Poetry originated (as far as we know) in what we would now call "channelling", a divine voice speaking through the human instrument. We don't think of it that way anymore, but there is a residual distinction between "inspired" and "uninspired" which remains somehow crucial. The poet is a miserable human being just like anybody else, to be sure, but sometimes he or she says something extraordinary, which cannot easily be attributed to his or her ordinary condition.

TM >> 'Feng' and 'Ya' are rectitude and moral instruction for the masses. It seems to me that these are excellences we seek not in every poem, but in the body of work of a master <<

Does "Ya" really mean "moral instruction for the masses"? What a cool word.

I would say, poetry should have conscience, and in this respect exhibit rectitude and moral upliftment to the masses (who are lined up around the block waiting to buy, along with bread and radishes, the latest thin volumes of their favorite poets).

graywyvern >> 1. "yugen", or mysterious beauty; i.e. resonance with the subconscious. (in the 18c.--often called the least poetical time for english-- this was not expected nor sought.) <<

"resonance with the subconscious" is a modern rationalization of inspiration. The modern scientific mentality refuses to acknowledge anything ontologically higher than everyday ordinary human consciousness, and so turns things upside-down: "sub" instead of "super".

>> 2. "calliditas", or concise aptness. some--a very few--good poets lack this (Whitman, Jeffers) but there will always be those who refuse them the first rank for this reason. <<

Speaking of Jeffers, anybody have the nice fat new "Selected Poems" from Stanford University Press? What a bizarre, strangely powerful poet.

Interesting point re. concision though. The saying that comes to mind is Keats's "the excellence of every art is its intensity". Intensity, commonly, in poetry, especially in lyric poetry (which nowadays is almost all poetry), is typically achieved by compression. But expansive poets like Whitman and Jeffers achieve intensity by accumulation.

[RCL]

AE, of course you're right, it's Pope. I was THINKING "the wisdom of many, the wit of one," but my fingers typed out the Pope's line. When a practicing pedant, I would have been ashamed. Now, it's simply amusing to comtemplate the synaptic misfire. Cheers. (And do share if you know who penned the "wisdom" thing, other than Emerson.)

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Ralph

[Tim Murphy]

AE, you might have guessed I'm no fan of Whitman. This just in this morning from Professor Mezey:

John Greenleaf Whittier
is growing ittier and bittier,
but Walt
is huge, to a fault.

[dorianne laux]

I really enjoyed this conversation about how to define a poem. I found the most quotable quote to be AE's:

The saying that comes to mind is Keats's "the excellence of every art is its intensity". Intensity...is typically achieved by compression. But expansive poets like Whitman and Jeffers achieve intensity by accumulation.

Yes, intensity via compression and/or accumulation.

[peter richards]

Poetry turns to itself for definition. Naturally, this is a circular argument, but the sort of argument, discussion or discourse that does not allow of circularity, is that which is not poetry.

That was a concentric argument, I suppose. Anyway, just to speculate a little, what the <u>quintessence</u> of poetry tends to do, is to take the reader aside from everyday rationale. As has been pointed out, this element of transportation form the ordinary is something that is common to all the arts.

Just before this speculation vanishes into the stratosphere, I'd like to reflect that this circular/cyclic/versa/coming-around-upon-itself that seems to be inherent in all text (text being etymologically twinned with textile) is by way of building a home in which to hang ones hat, or, in this case, a hook on which to suspend ones disbelief.

Love that feng wa. While I echo Steve's misgivings about poets telling people what to do, I sense a sort of zeitgeist morale even in that: poets telling people not to tell each other what to do. I think you'll work hard to get the wa out of poetry and when you're done, you'll have some pretty thin soup.

Nice conversation, cheers,

Peter

[graywyvern]

oh, a thing done well is all the teaching in it there needs to be.

[Thomas Newton]

“Lariat, if you had to choose a single defining ingredient for a poem, what would you say is the most important quality every poem should have?“

The answer to this question is simple. The most important quality of every poem is that it must be the product of a poet plying his trade. The elegance of this answer is that it shifts the question to a more fundamental question, i.e., “what is a poet?” Alexander Pope went a long way in answering this question in Imitations of Horace, Odes, bk. IV, ode 9, st 4:

Vain was the chief’s, the sage’s pride!
They had no poet and they died.

William Wordsworth, in the preface to Lyrical Ballads, continued the process:

The Poet binds together by passion and knowledge
the vast empire of human society, as it is spread over
the whole earth, and over all time.

But a poet is an artist, and an artist is a creator. Only God can create. But man was created in God’s image and man has free will, so that he can either create or pervert. Therefore the answer above becomes:

The most important quality of every poem is that it must be
the product of a poet plying his trade while he is creating.

Thomas Newton