Eratosphere Forums - Metrical Poetry, Free Verse, Fiction, Art, Critique, Discussions Able Muse - a review of poetry, prose and art

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Unread 12-30-2022, 02:47 PM
Yves S L Yves S L is offline
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I read these "poetry is dead" essays as one person or group of people's describing their own particular (not universal) journey through poetry, and combined with the fact that being a poet is not part of my identity that creates defensive reactions(many, many intense interests), I can read these things without being defensive by trying to draw a history which justifies what I myself decide to write, or otherwise trying to diminish or ridicule the author, and am happy trying to tease out the patterns in the person's thought as they compare to my own.

It is interesting to discuss perspectives on what poetry is, because it widens the possible conscious choices one can make while writing poetry, especially if a perspective goes against the grain of what one likes to do or habitually does. The contemplation of one's own craft apart from doing it is a basic mental action in numerous disciplines. It is the meta-perspective which guides the doing.

Each perspective is not something for me to fight against or ridicule, but is more like a tool. If Eliot is like the end of a line of poetry, could I myself write poems to show the progression that leads to Eliot's conclusion? What would that even mean? What is my personal stance towards modern industrial civilization, and what are the poetic tools that might express that stance in relation to previous tools of earlier eras? How would one even investigate the question? How would one attempt to begin?

When it comes to connectedness with nature and effects on cognition vis-a-vis the foundations of literacy, I like to post the following suggestive quote:

"I don't have to start with really intelligent or cultured people to make trackers. In fact it happens the other way around. There was a young student from Washington who was having terrible reading comprehension scores and was doing really badly in public school. I took him under my wing and mentored him in the art of tracking. It turned on aspects of his personality, of his brain, and of his mind, so that when he finally went back for his reading comprehension and the SATs he scored very very well, and there was no tutoring in reading, there was no academic training, there was only tracking. It's the most interdisciplinary inter-sensory demanding task that a human brain can experience, and it's also the most beautiful. It turns on the human computer in a way that nothing else can." [https://www.newvillage.net/Journal/Issue3/3young2.html]

There is a hidden topic about nature, sensory awareness, the mind, and words, a topic which can be applied to the reading and writing of anything, but can be applied to poetry in particular. The topic goes all the way down to how words are first introduced in schools and how a person personally interprets words, goes all the way down to the differences between the mental patterns of a developing child in the country as contrasted with the differing mental patterns to a developing child in the town.

But, yeah, I will just leave it there, though there are numerous paths one can take from here and wind up back to ... what kind of poetry would someone with dampened sensory systems which are somewhat disconnected from their world, what kind of poetry would such a person write? Heck, how would such a person write generally? How would the disconnected mental patterns be displayed in words?

Last edited by Yves S L; 12-30-2022 at 02:58 PM.
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Unread 12-30-2022, 03:30 PM
Shaun J. Russell Shaun J. Russell is offline
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"Yawn" is right. I taught an Intro to Poetry course at OSU in the spring, and there were 37 students. Course reviews were full of students saying "I was always intimidated by poetry, but I now love it" -- paraphrasing, but that was the gist.

Teaching composition this past semester (i.e. a non-poetry course) I had a student choose to focus his semester-long writing project on Duffy's "Delilah." I didn't even mention poetry in the course -- he had simply come across Duffy's work in the past and liked it.

Poetry's not as ubiquitous as other art forms, but so long as lips can kiss, and eyes can see, it's not going to the grave.
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Unread 12-30-2022, 04:38 PM
Mark McDonnell Mark McDonnell is offline
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What a silly article. Though really, I find it hard to care much about these "is poetry alive or dead?" debates. I know that one day I'll be dead and in the meantime I'll continue to read poems and whether those poems were written last month or 600 years ago doesn't really matter. Life is short. And poetry is alive to anyone who needs to write it or who reads it and loves it.

Last edited by Mark McDonnell; 12-30-2022 at 04:50 PM.
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Unread 12-30-2022, 05:34 PM
W T Clark W T Clark is offline
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Jim,
Yes, I love metre and rhyme as well.
But I think New Formalism, and really the word "formalism" may well have done the most to destroy metrical verse's standing in the poetic consciousness. "New Formalism's" poetic conservatism, its short-sightedness, its utterly unfounded arrogance, all these are its traits. If metre and rhyme will thrive it is not thanks to "New Formalism". Eratosphere, in my opinion, is one of the few good outgrowths of New Formalism.
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Unread 12-30-2022, 06:10 PM
Nick McRae Nick McRae is offline
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I subscribed to the NYT a number of years ago, but after a while realized that almost all of it's op-eds are written to be divisive and generate clicks.

If you're looking for substantive writing on poetry, you'd have to look elsewhere.
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Unread 12-30-2022, 06:23 PM
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Jennifer Reeser Jennifer Reeser is offline
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On an aside, Walther's piece apparently has succeeded in raising Harold Bloom from the dead for a comment, and actually has "Harold Bloom" trending on Twitter. The end is near.

I am not making this up. Check Jamie O'Halloran at the platform.

@JamieOHallo108


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