[New-Poetry] What is Poetry?
Jeff Newberry
jeff.newberry at gmail.com
Mon Jul 2 11:33:13 EDT 2007
Thanks Steve.
Jeff
On 7/2/07, Mccall, Steven NAVAIR <steven.mccall at navy.mil> wrote:
>
> It's from a didactic poem of hers called <hmm hmm> "Poetry".
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> [mailto:new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu] On Behalf Of Jeff Newberry
> Sent: Monday, July 02, 2007 10:55
> To: NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &,Views
> Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] What is Poetry?
>
> Good point, Steve. Do you have a source on that Marianne Moore quote?
> I'd love to read the essay(?) itself.
>
> Best,
> Jeff Newberry
>
>
> On 7/2/07, Mccall, Steven NAVAIR <steven.mccall at navy.mil> wrote:
>
> Yes, "real poems" would feature an ATM machine. Marianne Moore
> said,
> "Poetry is imaginary gardens with real toads in them." ATM
> machines
> qualify as toads in my mind.
>
> "In good art there is almost always a mystery which remains
> beyond
> explanation."
> ~ Dana Gioia
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> [mailto: new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> <mailto:new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu> ] On Behalf Of Jeff Newberry
> Sent: Monday, July 02, 2007 10:33
> To: NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &,Views
> Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] What is Poetry?
>
> Jim,
>
> I hadn't considered Jeffers' relationship to mystery. Thanks
> for
> pointing that out.
>
> Jeffers is an interesting case. Here are a couple of quotes
> from
> Jeffers' scant prose (from The Selected Poetry of Robinson
> Jeffers, Tim
> Hunt, ed.):
>
> " . . . poetry is bound to concern itself chiefly with permanent
> things
> and the permanent aspects of life [ . . . ] poetry must deal
> with things
> that a reader two thousand years away could understand and be
> moved by."
>
>
> This quote skirts close to Faulkner's "old verities." Jeffers
> goes to
> to clarify his meaning:
>
> "This [emphasis on the permanent] excludes much of the
> circumstances of
> modern life, especially in cities. Fashions, forms of
> machinery, the
> more complex social, financial, political adjustments, and so
> forth, are
> all ephemeral, exceptional; they exist but will never exist
> again.
> Poetry must concern itself with (relatively) permanent things.
> These
> have poetic value; the ephemeral have only news-value."
>
> I'm reminded, of course, of Pound's pithy dictum: "Poetry is
> news that
> stays news." However, I don't know that Jeffers really means
> what he
> says: hasn't human society always had "complex social,
> financial, [and]
> political adjustments?" (not sure what adjustments means in this
> context, btw). Is Jeffers arguing that a "real poem" (my loaded
> term)
> would never feature an airplane, say? Or an ATM machine?
>
> Just a few thoughts.
>
> Jeff Newberry
>
>
> On 7/2/07, jforjames at aol.com < jforjames at aol.com
> <mailto:jforjames at aol.com>
> <mailto:jforjames at aol.com> > wrote:
>
> Jackson's quote is a good one...though it's like so many
> quotes
> that have some "certainty" in their saying.
> He's framing the battle for poetry's soul as 'either/or'
> or
> 'zero sum' matter. That poetry can live with unceartainty
> and indeterminancy should be pretty well established by
> now. It
> seems to me that's much the fashion
> of poetry these days, particular post-avant poetry.
> Personally,
> I wouldn't want to avoid a poetry strove,
> at times, for fixity and exactness. I think a poet is
> capable of
> finding the stil-point amid the welter.
>
> It's curious that Jackson uses the verb
> 'illumine'...which means
> to shed light, and more generally, to show cleary.
> So we 'illumine' what is obscure (mysterious,
> inscrutable,
> etc.). The 'walls of mystery' made me think of Plato's wall
> within the cave. And living with 'doubt and uncertainty'
> is a
> notion close to Socrates' notion of 'aphoria'. Then
> Jackson seems to veer off at end this quote with almost
> a nod to
> someone like Robinson Jeffers (or eco-poetics),
> 'with a return to elemental awe and wonder'. (Jeffers'
> sonnet
> "Return, e.g.).
>
> No answers here...only observations.
> Finnegan
>
>
>
>
> It's the Negative Capability letter. To his
> brothers.
>
> *several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at
> once it
> struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement,
> especially in
> Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I
> mean
> Negative Capability, that is, /when a man is capable of being in
> uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching
> after
> fact and reason/-Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine
> isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery,
> from
> being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge. *
>
> The thing is, poetry is kinda different from
> life. In
> life, we probably have to reach after fact and reason pretty
> early on.
> In poetry, we allow ourselves a little more time. We can be of
> three
> minds, like a tree in which there are three blackbirds.
>
> I've asked this before, but since we're back to
> it
> again...what is Keats saying about Coleridge? The conventional
> wisdom
> seems to be that he's criticizing for a limitation -- I think
> he's
> praising him for a superior quality. I suppose that to try and
> answer
> this question might constitute an */irritable reaching after
> fact and
> reason/, *but what the hey.
>
> Jeff Newberry wrote:
> > It's funny that you mention Keats, Mole. I've
> been
> reading through > his letters. I'll try to track down the
> passage you
> reference. I'm > pretty sure that I know what you're talking
> about.
> >
> > Jeff Newberry
> >
> > On 7/1/07, *TheOldMole* <Opus40-01 at opus40.org
> > <
> mailto:Opus40-01 at opus40.org <mailto:Opus40-01 at opus40.org?> >>
> wrote:
> >
> > Keats kinda said the same thing.
> >
> > Jeff Newberry wrote:
> > > " . . . one of poetry's chief aims is to
> illumine
> the walls of
> > > mystery, the inscrutable, the unsayable. I
> think
> poetry ought to be
> > > taught not as an engine of meaning but as an
>
> opportunity to learn to
> > > live in doubt and uncertainty, as a means of
> claiming indeterminacy.
> > > Our species is deeply defined by its great
> surges of
> reason, but I
> > > think it high time we return to elemental
> awe and
> wonder."
> > >
> > > --Major Jackson, "Does Poetry Have a Social
> Function," Poetry,
> > January
> > > 2007
>
>
>
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>
>
>
> --
> "Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than
> recollects, longer than knowing even wonders."
> -William Faulkner, Light in August
>
>
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> --
> "Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than
> recollects, longer than knowing even wonders."
> -William Faulkner, Light in August
>
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--
"Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects,
longer than knowing even wonders."
—William Faulkner, Light in August
http://museoffireblog.blogspot.com
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