[inkwellpoetess]

While I was supposed to be researching information on the Euro, in the Christian Science Monitor, I got sidetracked, by what else, the subject of poetry. I'm curious as to what everyone thinks about these quotes:

"What exactly is poetry and what makes a good poem?
Here's what editors at The Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker think.

Peter Davison, poetry editor,
The Atlantic Monthly:

Poetry should make contact with every part of you, with the mind, with the senses, especially with the ear. [US Poet Laureate Robert] Pinsky likes to say that poetry is built on a column of breath, and I agree with him absolutely. Poetry is composing for the breath. The breath is the most intimate aspect of our existence. It is what connects us to the biosphere. It is what makes our voice operate. It is what makes oxygen go through our bodies, and it is what gives us rhyme, which is why poetry existed at all.

Poetry was a mnemonic device to enable people to remember their prayers. Or even the inventories of the warehouses in ancient Babylon. That's why we wrote in rhythm and meter, so that we could remember what we had thought or what we had compiled. The whole connection of sense to mind to memory to rhythm to emotion is why one gets involved.

Alice Quinn, poetry editor,
The New Yorker:

A poem is provoked by an emotion. But the emotion probably isn't fulfilled until the poem is made. I think when the design of a poem seems ideal and organic, when the feeling is strong and the language is fresh, it's going to strike us as truly resolved and original.

You know, Elizabeth Bishop said that she could tell when she read a great poem because for the next 24 hours she saw the world in the light of that poem. As if the poem itself had cast its own emotional tone over everything, and she would feel life under the guidance of that star. Sometimes, after I take a group of poems and send them downstairs to get set into type, on my way home in the subway I'll try to remember which eight poems I put through that day. I can almost always remember them pretty exactly, because if you love a poem, you can summon it up from beginning to end. It has a wonderful first line and it's fulfilled and it's cinched at the end and it has a shape, like a great ballet has a shape or a great piece of music."

I find that whole poems do not stay with me, but great images from poems do stay with me, bits and pieces, here and there.

------------------
Regards,
Terri

[joyeleonora]

Your question reminds me of when a few months back in another writing group I posted the question, what is art? That question was the start of a very very long discussion that lasted for weeks if not months. Me I just sat back and read, without giving much comment. Of all the responses and post the question generated there were only a few that I thought clever and worth remembering. One of the replies to my question was a poem by Rudyard Kipling, it's about art but you'll get the point...

THE CONUNDRUM OF THE WORKSHOPS -- RUDYARD KIPLING

When the flush of a new-born sun fell first on Eden's green and gold,
Our father Adam sat under the Tree and scratched with a stick in the mould;
And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty heart,
Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves, "It's pretty, but is it Art?"

Wherefore he called to his wife, and fled to fashion his work anew --
The first of his race who cared a fig for the first, most dread revies;
And he left his lore to the use of his sons -- and that was a glorious gain,
When the Devil chuckled "Is is Art?"in the ear of the branded Cain.

They fought and they talked in the North and the South,
they talked and they fought in the West,
Till the waters rose on the pitiful land, and the poor Red Clay had rest --
Had rest till that dank blank-canvas dawn when the dove was preened to start,
And the Devil bubbled below the keel: "It's human, but is it Art?"

They builded a tower to shiver the sky and wrench the stars apart,
Till the Devil grunted behind the bricks: "It's striking, but is it Art?"
The stone was dropped at the quarry-side, and the idle derrick swung,
While each man talked of the aims of Art, and each in an alien tongue.

The tale is as old as the Eden Tree -- and new as the new-cut tooth --
For each man knows ere his lip-thatch grows he is master of Art and Truth;
And each man hears as the twilight nears, to the beat of his dying heart,
The Devil drum on the darkened pain: "You did it, but was it Art?"

We have learned to whittle the Eden Tree to the shape of a surplice-peg,
We have learned to bottle are parents twain in the yelk of an addled egg,
We know that the tail must wag the dog, for the horse is drawn by the cart;
But the Devil whoops, as he whooped of old: "It's clever, but is it Art?"

When the flicker of the London sun fall faint on the Club-room's green and gold,
The sons of Adam sit them down and scratch with their pens in the mould --
They scratch with their pens in the mould of their graves,
and the ink and the anguish start,
For the Devil mutters behind the leaves: "It's pretty, but is it Art?"

Now, if we could win the Eden Tree where the Four Great Rivers flow,
And the Wreath of Eve is red on the turf as she left it long ago,
And if we could come when the sentry slept and softly scurry through,
By the favour of God we might know as much -- as our father Adam knew!


-------------------------

I can't wait to see where your question will lead, my opinion sofar....

When the flush of the new born sun fell first on Eden's green and gold
Our Father Adam sat under the tree and scratched with a stick in the mold
and the first rough draft that the world had seen filled his heart with glee
Till the devil whispered behind the leaves, "It's pretty but is it poetry?"


Gabriëlle Joy Eleonora

[graywyvern]

unlike the other silly question that was asked
hereabouts recently ("what is the greatest lyric
poem in English?") i don't think this one is worth
answering. formerly, there was an answer for every
age & every culture but now there are 500 & the
prevailing sense is that each poet decides for himself
which criteria to use. the odd thing is, though, that
when poets do argue they seem to think they are taking
one of two (or, occasionally, three) possible positions.
after an hour, if they are smart & somewhat lucky, they
will then discover that they don't even have definitions
in common for the words they've been using to describe
their positions... such is the state of intellectual
discourse at the end of the 20c.

[A. E. Stallings]

Though more general in its criticism, I think it applies very nicely to poetry too:

"And what is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without pictures or conversations?"

[Richard Wakefield]

I think it's a good question, no less good for being unaswerable with any final definition. The word has been stretched with use, like most words, but the very fact that we continue to use it suggests that we still find it useful.
To my ear poetry is language used as much for sound and form as for paraphrasable meaning; or it's sound and form that are inextricable from meaning. To my taste, it includes at least the ghost of meter, as one poet-scholar has put it. But I love being surprised by "poems" that seem at first to be far from my preconceptions and that then turn out either to meet them in unexpected ways or to force me to rethink them. That's part of the conversation that I think poetry is a vital part of.
Richard