[Solan]

I've been wondering a bit about the policy of "show, don't tell" and "concrete, not abstract". You can hardly come across more excellent and frequently needed advice than these two rules of thumb. Whenever such advice has been applied to my own poems, it has been spot-on.

But: I think these rules-of-thumb can be overzealously applied. Not so much on Eratosphere; more on other fora I've seen. It has led me to wonder what the limits of "abstraction" and "tell" is in a poem. How much can be in, in which cases, etc.

Let me make a short mock critique of Coleridge's Xanadu:

where Ankh, the sacred river ...

"Sacred" is such a cliche. Try replacing it with more concrete image, like a religious procession along the river, or priests making sacrifice to it.

... to caverns measureless to man

Again a cliche. "Measureless" is a no-no; how can anyone know that anything is measureless? The best they can do is to say that it is really vast. But don't just change this to "very vast caverns" (or something like it contrived to fit your meter). Show the cavern to be large: Send down a team of explorers to measure it.

As a contrast to Coleridge, you have newbie poets like myself who would write

My love for you so sacred, so measureless, divine

without blinking. In such cases, the rules-of-thumb apply with full force.

So my question to you is: When is "abstract" and "telling" language is permissible in - and perhaps even necessary for - a poem.
Or maybe stated another way: When is an abstraction an abstraction, and when is telling merely telling?



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Svein Olav
http://nonserviam.com/solan/

[R. S. Gwynn]

>>So my question to you is: When is "abstract" and "telling" language is permissible in - and perhaps even necessary for - a poem.
Or maybe stated another way: When is an abstraction an abstraction, and when is telling merely telling?


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With beginners, the problem is that most of them want to write abstractly all the time. They try to write about experience instead of making the reader experience. I just usually say that you have to earn the right to your abstractions and that you should save them for the end of the poem. By that time you probably won't need them anyway and you can simply jettison the final stanza. In other words, the abstractions are what the reader should come up with on his or her own. By this, I don't necessarily mean that Keats should have cut the final stanza of "Ode on a Grecian Urn," probably the most flagrant example of over the top abstraction in poetry yet for me a perfectly satisfactory way of ending the poem. I mean, what's he going to do? Describe walking out of the gallery?

[robert mezey]

Sam, good advice for beginners, but there are
many exceptions. Cunningham, for example;
E. A. Robinson, for example.

[wendy v]

Solan, I enjoyed your mock critique of Coleridge, as I often hear echos of workshopeese things when I'm reading the immortals. Oh, Mr Blake, don't you think you should watch the "ing" words ? Burning bright could surely have more immediacy if...

And Mr Rilke, please refrain from using the word, "soul"...

I'm wondering what the Lariat thinks of poetry workshops, online and/or in classsroom settings, and whether they, on the whole, seem to be producing better poems/poets or just more careful ones.

wendy

[R. S. Gwynn]

>>Sam, good advice for beginners, but there are
many exceptions. Cunningham, for example;
E. A. Robinson, for example.

Bob, Cunningham would have to rank near the top of the list in the use of abstraction. But I wouldn't put Robinson anywhere near him on that score, though he certainly does use quite a bit. I think of the glorious "The Sheaves" as an example of his imagery at its most powerful. But Robinson was much closer to the 19th century, when the strictures against abstraction weren't so severe. Drop back another century and you'll find the abstraction (albeit personified) one of the chief devices of the age.

[Solan]

Thank you for your answers. Would you say that the underlying art philosophy has changed, so that what was permissible before, may not be permissible now, and vice versa? Not in terms of an explicit philosophy of art, but in terms of what is practiced, that is.


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Svein Olav

.. another life

[R. S. Gwynn]

>>Would you say that the underlying art philosophy has changed, so that what was permissible before, may not be permissible now, and vice versa? Not in terms of an explicit philosophy of art, but in terms of what is practiced, that is.


I'd just say that taste has changed. But no change in taste is permanent.

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page
Rich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll;
Chill Penury repressed their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul.

No contemporary would write in this manner. Nor would too many contemporary painters employ the manner of Reynolds or composer use the methods of Mozart--unless they were parodying or consciously imitating. But our taste for what is au courant shouldn't blind us to the beauties of other eras. Eventually we will all look as dated as Gray and the others.