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

Forum Left Top

Notices

Reply
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #1  
Unread 09-21-2001, 04:29 PM
Richard Wakefield Richard Wakefield is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2000
Location: Federal Way, Washington, USA
Posts: 1,664
Post

It seems to me there are two ways of viewing the demarcation between great poetry and mediocre or even outright crappy poetry. We can see them as opposites, with, say, Auden somehow at odds with Rod McKuen. The implication would be that the two ways of seeing and speaking are not merely different but actually undercut one another. Crappy poetry instills or encourages habits of reading and thinking that make it harder to read and appreciate the good stuff; the good stuff teaches us to be unsatisfied, even repulsed, by the crap.
The other view is that poetry exists along a continuum, from Julia Moore to Robert Service to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., to Frost, and that the best perhaps even rests upon a foundation of the less than best. Picture a pyramid, with all the popular, occasional, superficial, or opportunistic poetry filling out the vast base and providing the steps by which we (both as writers and readers) ascend.
I tend to favor the second view. My early and continuing love of poetry that I know full well isn't great doesn't seem to harm my appreciation for what is great. It seems rather to lead me to it, often. And yet it seems possible that bad poetry -- and especially merely facile poetry -- could instill habits of sloppy reading that would keep one from developing an ear for the best.
Of course the question applies to all the arts, and I'd love to hear your opinions.
Richard
Reply With Quote
  #2  
Unread 09-21-2001, 06:34 PM
nyctom nyctom is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2001
Location: New York, NY USA
Posts: 3,699
Post

Carol: Thank you for just good sense.

nyctom
Reply With Quote
  #3  
Unread 09-21-2001, 08:02 PM
Ernest Ernest is offline
New Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2001
Location: New York
Posts: 42
Post

And then there might be the demarcation of good and bad responses to your intriguing question. Thanks for asking it. You have an inquiring mind, to say the least. I suppose there's a vast division between tastes, particularly in bake-offs, when the judge tastes the various cakes. I like chocolate, myself.

However, poetry has such a varied and vast wealth. I'm siding with your continuum, with most of what we think is grand in modern verse (Whitman, Larkin, Berryman) at the bottom. Yeap, there's the poorhouse.

Now, what's at the top. Those rich fellows in their stellar rows. Well, it's the cannon, which has endured for reasons that are not at all facile.

Isn't it terrible how one can ask a perfectly good question and the answers start whistling dixie.



------------------
The Poet Watch
http://www.geocities.com/erslyman
Reply With Quote
  #4  
Unread 09-22-2001, 09:37 AM
Richard Wakefield Richard Wakefield is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2000
Location: Federal Way, Washington, USA
Posts: 1,664
Post

Carol:
I must have stated my question unclearly. I'd be the last to suggest that we should restrict what we read and write according to some predetermined standard of greatness. As I said in my post, I read lots of stuff that would be hard to call great or even, sometimes, very good. My question is simply whether mediocrity is the antithesis of greatness, or is instead a stepping stone toward greatness.
Do you mean by your reply that we should suspect all critical judgments, or that our tastes should never be discussed or debated? I often feel that way. But I often feel otherwise, too. Of course, if my feelings were mostly that discussion and debate are futile, it would be hyporcritical of me to work as a critic and teaacher -- and to have an online forum on criticism.
RPW
Reply With Quote
  #5  
Unread 09-22-2001, 09:58 AM
RCL's Avatar
RCL RCL is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Posts: 6,761
Post

Richard, your excellent question reminded me of I.A. Richards' chapter on "Badness in Poetry," from way back in 1925. As I recall, he encouraged readers, writers, and critics to be very aware of popular poetry--the kind that demands "stock responses," not responses rooted in the writer's or reader's actual experiences. He felt poetry "bad" if it failed to communicate (real or imagined experience)clearly or if it flawlessly communicated something not worth communicating. By reading McKuen and then Shakespeare, we realize the differences (the two I used when teaching "Badness in Poetry" in criticism courses).

------------------
Ralph
Reply With Quote
  #6  
Unread 09-22-2001, 10:35 AM
Tim Murphy Tim Murphy is offline
Lariat Emeritus
 
Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Fargo ND, USA
Posts: 13,816
Post

I read all kinds of verse, from bad to great, and I think Richard's pyramid is a good metaphor. Carol, I also think your argument is reductio ad absurdam, that this leaves room for only one poem at the top. I've climbed Mount Parnassus, starting from Delphi, taking the ancient, carved stair up above the Phaedriades, etc. It's a big rounded massif, but if there were room for only one poem at the top, "Neither Out Far Nor In Deep" would do nicely.
Reply With Quote
  #7  
Unread 09-22-2001, 12:34 PM
Ernest Ernest is offline
New Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2001
Location: New York
Posts: 42
Post

Poor Richard --

As if by asking the question the questioner is somehow under suspicion. As if curiosity had within it some dark nature, a doom which will bit us all -- a deficiency to the mental process.

I say let's roast this pig on the fire of diverging opinions. The whole business of untenable postures can be fun. But really.

I say stating there's no definition or precise greatness identifiable by name or genre is a form of eliticim, in itself. A cul de sac for the undereducated.



------------------
The Poet Watch
http://www.geocities.com/erslyman
Reply With Quote
  #8  
Unread 09-22-2001, 01:30 PM
Carol Taylor Carol Taylor is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Jan 2000
Location: Houston, TX, USA
Posts: 7,827
Post

I decided to withdraw my undereducated opinion and let you good people get back to Richard's original question.

Carol
Reply With Quote
  #9  
Unread 09-22-2001, 03:37 PM
Richard Wakefield Richard Wakefield is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2000
Location: Federal Way, Washington, USA
Posts: 1,664
Post


The question of whether greatness in art can be finally determined is a perfectly good question. I suspect that what makes art is its contingency, it dependence upon so many contexts, including everything the reader or viewer brings to it. For this reason, final determination can never happen, any more than there can be a final reading of a given poem. Lots of folks take the endless discussion of Shakespeare, for example, as proof that criticism is futile; I take it as proof that human experience is open-ended. Thank God.
I go to poetry craving the spark that jumps the gap between me and another seemingly isolated soul. Corny, but there it is. There would be something absurd, to my way of thinking, in believing that poetry could somehow bridge that gap but that discussion of poetry could never do so.
Still, unlike many of my colleagues in academia and criticism, I've never doubted that writing about poetry is a much more trivial passtime than writing poetry. I do what I can within my limitations.
In any case, here's a variation on my original question: How far is from, say, Ogden Nash to Shakespeare? Light years, or a single alchemical transformation? Could it be that all the lesser works accumulate in the writer's (and reader's) heart until some sudden recombination, leavened with the writer's (and reader's)extra-literary experience, transforms it? That would explain why I have read so many poems that ignite much, much later. Frost's "Home Burial" comes to mind. At nineteen the poem was a chore, even though I liked Frost's lyrics. Ten years later it was endlessly rich, and it has remained so for the twenty years since. I suspect that the cumulative weight of what I read and experienced in the interim amde the difference. Likewise, how did Frost get from "My Butterfly" to "Home Burial" in a decade or so? Probably by the same means.
Of course this is all an argument for my stepping-stone thesis. I'd be glad to hear opposing views.
RPW
Reply With Quote
  #10  
Unread 09-23-2001, 05:56 AM
Ernest Ernest is offline
New Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2001
Location: New York
Posts: 42
Post

Another analogy might serve. How can we judge a person for their contribution to society? Can people be great? Or is it haphazardly a matter of taste that history singles out this person or that? What criteria would serve in making such a judgment? History is comprised of many heroes, their achievement valued for their time and representative of their time.

A poem being a living member of a literary society might be judged by a similar value system -- one based on significance of contribution, e.g. what historical impact on poetry occurred, what beauty wrought, insights into its own time or achievement of that universal accord that transcends the time in which it was written. If society identifies with that contribution from a specific poet or poem then it is judged favorably. And survives as a symbol and record of its greatness.

------------------
The Poet Watch
http://www.geocities.com/erslyman
Reply With Quote
Reply

Bookmarks

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump



Forum Right Top
Forum Left Bottom Forum Right Bottom
 
Right Left
Member Login
Forgot password?
Forum LeftForum Right


Forum Statistics:
Forum Members: 8,399
Total Threads: 21,840
Total Posts: 270,804
There are 1849 users
currently browsing forums.
Forum LeftForum Right


Forum Sponsor:
Donate & Support Able Muse / Eratosphere
Forum LeftForum Right
Right Right
Right Bottom Left Right Bottom Right

Hosted by ApplauZ Online