[New-Poetry] What is Poetry?
Skip Fox
skip at louisiana.edu
Mon Jul 2 13:49:05 EDT 2007
Moore quote from the full version of "Poetry" beginning "I, too, dislike it"
(I cannot lineate in e-mail accurately, so):
". . . One must make a distinction / however: when dragged into prominence
by half poets, the result is not poetry, / nor till the poets among us can
be / "literalists of / the imagination"-above / insolence and triviality
and can present / / for inspection, "imaginary gardens with real toads in
them, shall we have / it. . . ."
and the lines are gracefully arranged on the page, or such that rather
officious language ("can present / / for inspection") seems to have an
edenic shine.
_The Poems of Marianne Moore_. Ed. Grace Schulman. New York: Penguin, 2003.
-----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 9:55 AM
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: <mailto:new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
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> > 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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