Reality in poetry

[rayheinrich]

Reality in poetry.

This was commented on in the "The Purpose of Poetry" thread, but I thought
it deserved its own thread.

Prose has distinct categories for fiction and non-fiction, but poetry doesn't.
Why is that?

Was poetry, at some point (or now) viewed as so abstract that
it was unnecessary to make that distinction?

Or that its subjects didn't require that distinction to be made?

Is the 1st person confusion/misconception more pronounced in poetry because of the above?

------

Their's a poet on 'Deep Underground Poetry' who has written a few poems
(quite good, if scary) in 1st person where the narrator is a pedophile.
People go nuts, especially the ones that don't 'get' that a poem's narrator
isn't necessarily the author. Some of these are thoughtful poems that
explore pedophilia and bring up some interesting social contradictions;
some are violently graphic. Should a poet not do 1st person on the latter?

I am not brave enough to ever write 1st person about this topic. The practical
reason is I don't want some people to confuse me with the pedophile in my
poem. This is bowing to ignorance. But, as I said, in this instance I'm not
strong enough to live up to my principles.

But the other reason, is more interesting:  While I'm rationally aware that
the author should never be assumed to be the narrator, emotionally/irrationally
I react to it, I feel the writer IS the character.

I guess one reason is that, as a reader, I've gotten so good at suspending my
disbelief, of immersing myself in what I'm reading, that it has leaked over
into my perception of the real world. I guess it's like the old saying about
salespeople: the best ones believe their own lies.

So if I wrote 1st person about a pedophile, I would, in some fashion, be one.
This is the same problem encountered by actors (especially 'method actors').
When they play a vicious killer, their personality changes even when they are
not acting, and afterwards they can sometimes suffer something akin to PTSD
(posttraumatic stress disorder).

Another reason is that writers take advantage of, even promulgate this
misconception (there a SO many books that authors claim to be non-fiction,  
when, in reality, they're not). The reason is that readers really want to
believe what they're reading is real and are more likely to buy, enjoy,
and be moved by them if they think they are real.

How have you as a writer, reader, coped with this irrational side of yourself?

Do you find yourself consciously/subconsciously trying to convince your
readers, not by overt claims such as the 'non-fiction' authors above, but by
how you structure your narrative, how you present your characters, the context,
the setting... that what you are writing is real?

[Tiger the Lion]

I think this is pretty common among writers. Most recently, I had a difficult time with the Napm prompt to write from the POV of someone doing something dark. It's not a place I feel overly comfortable going. C.S. Lewis was repeatedly asked why he did not write a sequel to "The Screwtape Letters". He simply said he could not "go there" again. Too taxing.

Some, however manage to do it very well without damage to their own psychic stability.

[ellajam]

I write mostly from my own POV and if I am going to spend time on something I prefer it to be joyous. I think it is a shortcoming as a writer and have admiration for writers with the imagination and grasp of the human condition past their own to write from as many varied POV as there are possibilities.

I was going to bring up the NaPM prompts too. Last year I had a problem when asked to write a poem from the opposite point of view of my own. I wasted the dark side prompt by complaining about other people writing from the dark side. I wrote in a form to at least give myself some sort of challenge but I'm the sort that thinks real life is scary enough and just don't get the nightmare as pleasure thing. I was proud of myself that I managed the palinode, even if I just wrote a silly thing in response to my first silly thing.

It's the same with forum personalities. Some people enjoy the opportunity to build someone other than themselves. I'm just me for better, worse or who gives a shit, and choose to interact as if everyone is but I'm not surprised when someone reveals a talent for being more than one person at at time. It's just one of the many talents I don't have.

I also was on a forum where someone posted very good poetry about cruelty in many forms. I read them and he really was very good but they sure weren't my favorites and when he moved to another forum I didn't follow. I can respect it, it's just not how I choose to spend my time and remaining brain cells.

[bena]

My ability to shift into other ppl's POV is really just multiple personality disorder. And hey, Ella....at least I got the title bombardier out of your poem. Most of the hideously dark things I write about I've come across in nursing. Sad, but true. When you can handle a family member handing you a bucket of brains on ice because their son shot his head off (and they expect you can put it back in) and not blink...that's the real challenge.

[milo]

This is a pretty interesting topic. I think "truth/ is not as solid a rock as most people think. Every truth was a lie first until it became. Every lie is really just truth that has not been written into being.

The "you" that you believe in is no more real than the make believe "you" that you create for the internet. Both are personalities that you create and attempt to control (not always successfully) and both have a lot more plasticity than you think. The real difference is that you actually believe in one of them. That can change. 

[billy]

i think i know who you speak of, he once asked me to comment on a poem they did, i found it to absurd and very badly written. i also found it to be more than a little disturbing that someone asked me to crit such a pm in private. admittedly i had left critique on a child porn poem they did which they didn't like. it wasn't that the poem was in first person, i just found to be bad poetry, that said i don't read child porn poetry if i know that that's what it is, i'm the same with gratuitous rape poetry,
narrative fiction or non-fiction. does it matter? shouldn't the good narrative or any other kind of poetry place us in or at the very least looking into the poem? in many respects i think poetry while written as fiction can often be viewed as non-fiction. i personally want to be part of the poetry i read. i want to experience the writer's imagination. i say imagination because their personal recollection of something is probably tainted and somewhat grandiose. violently graphical poetry should be written of course, as should anything else. as an adult i'm capable of choosing what i wish to read. as for gratuitous child porn poetry and other works in a similar theme, in general they're against the law and as such wouldn't risk having them on the site. i doubt  distinction, other than the readers is needed. people can be pretty clever as well as stupid, even when it's a "this is a true story poem" i tend to treat it as fiction. for me to see as any kind of reality, it has to be good enough to draw me in; some of your poetry draws the reader in, well some of it draws me in anyway. it's made to be real by the way it's written, not by any truth one may imbue as the poet. so no, i don't need a distinction.
when i write, i have no need to insert myself, my sense of humour comes in handy as do my experiences and imagination. i write for the sake of writing, thankfully i have no meme, intention or message to share, though i do enjoy making myself smile on the very very odd occasion when someone likes a poem i do.

Reality in poetry.
This was commented on in the "The Purpose of Poetry" thread, but I thought
it deserved its own thread.
Prose has distinct categories for fiction and non-fiction, but poetry doesn't.
Why is that?
Was poetry, at some point (or now) viewed as so abstract that
it was unnecessary to make that distinction?
Or that its subjects didn't require that distinction to be made?
Is the 1st person confusion/misconception more pronounced in poetry because of the above?
------
Their's a poet on 'Deep Underground Poetry' who has written a few poems
(quite good, if scary) in 1st person where the narrator is a pedophile.
People go nuts, especially the ones that don't 'get' that a poem's narrator
isn't necessarily the author. Some of these are thoughtful poems that
explore pedophilia and bring up some interesting social contradictions;
some are violently graphic. Should a poet not do 1st person on the latter?
I am not brave enough to ever write 1st person about this topic. The practical
reason is I don't want some people to confuse me with the pedophile in my
poem. This is bowing to ignorance. But, as I said, in this instance I'm not
strong enough to live up to my principles.
But the other reason, is more interesting:  While I'm rationally aware that
the author should never be assumed to be the narrator, emotionally/irrationally
I react to it, I feel the writer IS the character.
I guess one reason is that, as a reader, I've gotten so good at suspending my
disbelief, of immersing myself in what I'm reading, that it has leaked over
into my perception of the real world. I guess it's like the old saying about
salespeople: the best ones believe their own lies.
So if I wrote 1st person about a pedophile, I would, in some fashion, be one.
This is the same problem encountered by actors (especially 'method actors').
When they play a vicious killer, their personality changes even when they are
not acting, and afterwards they can sometimes suffer something akin to PTSD
(posttraumatic stress disorder).
Another reason is that writers take advantage of, even promulgate this
misconception (there a SO many books that authors claim to be non-fiction,  
when, in reality, they're not). The reason is that readers really want to
believe what they're reading is real and are more likely to buy, enjoy,
and be moved them if they think they are real.
How have you as a writer, reader, coped with this irrational side of yourself?
Do you find yourself consciously/subconsciously trying to convince your
readers, not by overt claims such as the 'non-fiction' authors above, but by
how you structure your narrative, how you present your characters, the context,
the setting... that what you are writing is real?

[ellajam]

This is a pretty interesting topic. I think "truth/ is not as solid a rock as most people think. Every truth was a lie first until it became. Every lie is really just truth that has not been written into being.

The "you" that you believe in is no more real than the make believe "you" that you create for the internet. Both are personalities that you create and attempt to control (not always successfully) and both have a lot more plasticity than you think. The real difference is that you actually believe in one of them. That can change. 

I agree that there is a great fluidity to the human condition, but I've found there is a kernel inside that doesn't seem to change. It can be polished or muddied but it remains the same, often revealing itself with age the same way in does in early youth. Some of us can become what we want to be in regards to our interactions with others, and even, or especially, ourselves, while others become on the outside what life has made us but IMO it all swirls around a genetically influenced "you".

[Todd]

I always try to convince people that what I write is real because the speaker in the poem believes it all to be real. The problem I have with dark topics (like I had in NaPM) in poetry is the same I have in fiction, the villain doesn't believe they're the villain. They believe they're the hero, and I don't tend to want to go into that space too often to come up with a defense for things that are mostly indefensible. The I in my poem is almost never me (or to milo's point who I identify as me) but there is always some connection point that makes the writing feel right. Like in your example Ray, you could just take the feelings you have toward an adult and overlay them on a child to make the writing seem real. I don't prefer to do that exercise so it would constrain my treatment if any on that subject and a variety of others. I always think of writing as introducing something new to the world and there are some things I'll let others introduce. We had one poet on another site that wrote things like you mention. When you didn't like his work you were accused of censoring his creative expression. Even if the creative expression came across as nothing more than shock value.

[Brownlie]

I guess the novel format can better simulate reality, and we could look at many theories to try and explain this phenomenon. I.e. endless enumerations with items that we glaze over and take for evidence of the real. Yet, the fiction/non-fiction distinction may be connected to the way books are sold or something. I guess at some point poetry began to be seen as a form of self expression, though I don't think that was always the case. So, that self expression ideology  may confuse some readers of poetry. At some point, I may result to solipsist argument here.

[Leanne]

I wish readers joy of trying to figure out which I is me and which I is entirely fabricated. Of course, there is always something of me in my I...

but I don't mind slipping on an entirely different perspective. It's what challenges us and makes us grow as human beings. If everyone could take a closer look at the other side, we'd have a great deal more understanding and tolerance.Then again, politicians aren't poets so that's that theory screwed.

The irritating thing (ok, one of the irritating things, because there are many) about this mistaking the I for the writer in poetry is that (sane) people never watch a movie and assume that the lead actor really is the person they're playing. Most people don't read a novel from first person and think it's an autobiography. Get a clue: a poem is not a diary entry, even if it sometimes looks like one.

[rayheinrich]

... (sane) people never watch a movie and assume that the lead actor really is the person they're playing  

    She said, evidencing a naïvety so profound as to defy all reason and cast it deep into the realm of the supernatural.

[Leanne]

Not everyone is as gullible as those in the land that gave us Hollywood.

[rayheinrich]

Not everyone is as gullible as those in the land that gave us Hollywood.

The operative phrase there is "Not everyone". Never claimed 100%.
Actors, especially stars, have always been treated/thought-of as their characters.  
More so than poetry, that's for sure. I don't consider myself particularly gullible,
but whenever I was around some well-known actor, I could not help but
think of him as his character. It's a product of not knowing them in real life;
the brain ends up filling the vacuum.

[billy]

if there were fiction and non-fiction categories in poetry like there is in prose, i'd always list mine under non-fiction, simply because i like to lie a lot.
we have no way on knowing if a poem is either or bits of both. okay, so sexton/plath as well as others were suicidal, they obviously put themselves in their works but how much? how much was fiction in order to get the thing out? it's all fiction to me, the fiction i enjoy the most is the believable fiction.

[rayheinrich]

if there were fiction and non-fiction categories in poetry like there is in prose, i'd always list mine under non-fiction, simply because i like to lie a lot.
we have no way on knowing if a poem is either or bits of both. okay, so sexton/plath as well as others were suicidal, they obviously put themselves in their works but how much? how much was fiction in order to get the thing out? it's all fiction to me, the fiction i enjoy the most is the believable fiction.

    Yes, believable fiction is my fav as well. I have spent my entire life trying to construct one for myself.
    Every once in a while blood gets in the way, but that's what bandages are for.

[ellajam]

This thread has taken a delicious turn for truth, or lies, whatever. Each poem is just as true as everything else in life. PPPffftttt, poof or the disappearing word of your choice.

[Leanne]

Just bumping some of my favourite discussions, to see what new things come to light.

[RiverNotch]

I have a feeling that the "realness" of a work isn't tied to whether or not it's prose or poetry, or whether or not it sings of real things, but whether or not the poet adapted an authoritative voice, and whether or not the audience finds his genre particularly authoritative. I'm guessing prose is a fairly new genre, so it only seems realest now because all the official texts of old were in plain prose (and because it possesses a continuity of thought that makes it feel like it was just suddenly spoken, like the author was just blurting out the stuff he knew at the top of his head, rather than being all fussy as with poetry), but then I'm also guessing people thought the Iliad or the Aeneid were actual histories, and the Ode or the Lamentation possessed social functions that made the emotions they expressed, whenever used by the speaker, to be always legitimate. But, in the end, it shouldn't have a bearing to our appreciation of the work -- all poetry is imagination, and all imagination is make-believe, such that what matters is that we believe it's true, even for only the moments when we're reading. Or believe that the artificiality of it all is meant to say something, meant to hide away emotions or thoughts or stories bubbling away under the surface -- and thus, present a hidden reality, which of course is still an imagined reality.

It is interesting to note that Frye's Anatomy of Criticism doesn't consider veracity when outlining his theory of genres -- that, and the fact that, in his experiment in creating a more unified system of criticism (as opposed, I think, to the systems of New Criticism prevalent to the day) that seeks to treat poetry as it is (as opposed, I think, to the other end of the spectrum, to all the Marxist and Feminist and such works out there), he distinguishes between prose and poetry (and drama -- and he divides poetry into two groups, epic and lyric poetry -- and of course all these genres often blend together) only in terms of mimetic form, rhythm, and poet-audience relationship (as in, whether or not the reader is isolated, or whether or not the poet exists as a person rather than, say in the case of a drama, a puppeteer), not in terms of anything more intrinsic; ie, that he liberally calls, as if I remember right established in his prologue, both poetry and prose "poetry".

So that, for me, resolves the issue of a work's veracity. It doesn't really matter, unless I'm studying it with a certain agenda in mind, such as trying to relate it to history, or trying to set up a biography for its author. The fiction/non-fiction device may just be something set up by journalists to make sure their work isn't easily dismissed, or by booksellers to make sure the crowd is managed easily enough -- it's nothing wrong, but to treat it any more seriously than that would be a trap -- and it's a device I think poets don't really care about because they have other priorities (such as actually making their works sing), and poem-sellers don't really care about because the market also has other priorities (either the audience more academic, in that they'd prefer classification by style and origin, or the audience is so minuscule as to be a compartment of their own). Although all this talk of sellers and markets makes me think that the fiction/non-fiction device is a modern thing, and that somehow the modern reader's judgment has devolved....

I suppose I could never claim to have written anything that wasn't from my point-of-view. Even the stuff I've written from supposedly completely different people in completely alien circumstances using completely new rhythms and symbols can only come from myself, and to claim that they're exact, unfiltered representations of the other would be a sort of bastardization of what the other is, the other being by definition outside the self. I suppose the artist takes in, filters out according to his or her point of view, then spews out the whatever -- they can never present anything without the involvement of the self (otherwise the work of art wasn't really made), and conversely they can never present anything without the involvement of some other (otherwise the work of art can't communicate its own existence). I don't really find myself trying to convince people of anything; instead, I am always convincing people of something, though whether what I've convinced them fits in with what I want to believe is what determines whether or not I was successful, and normally what I want to communicate doesn't relate to whether something is true or not, at least not directly.

But as a reader? Again, I don't care -- if I believe it to be true, then I believe the author has succeeded in one dimension, but really it matters less than if it made me think about stuff or feel stuff. As a more critical reader, however, when responding to the work, I try not to speak like I'm assuming the speaker is the author, but when the work is convincing in its goodness (or badness -- I find that it's the extremes that make a work seem more from-the-heart), it's hard not to, my tongue loves its shortcuts. And then there are also the times when a work seems to have an agenda, a beyond-the-aesthetic message, or when the author claims it to have one -- and again, I try not to, but I can't help it, though in this case I think it's more excusable, since if the point of the author was to preach about Jesus Christ or about how Global Warming isn't true anyway, then he or she should be delighted that someone's actually listening, even if that someone voices a nitpicky or wholly contrary opinion.

[Achebe]

I don't think there should be two (epic and lyric) classes of poetry. There should be three. Lyric - music, the ear, sonics; Epic - storytelling, narration, drama, pure and simple, and there's a third, image-rich form that's not lyric and not epic, but is most of modern poetry.

[RiverNotch]

I don't think there should be two (epic and lyric) classes of poetry. There should be three. Lyric - music, the ear, sonics; Epic - storytelling, narration, drama, pure and simple, and there's a third, image-rich form that's not lyric and not epic, but is most of modern poetry.

I'm not sure if I mentioned it there, but the genres do blend. Really, the third class of poetry you speak of just feels like a blend of the other two, especially since lyric's associative rhythm does mean a good deal of images. But it's been a good deal since I read it, and you should probably just give it a shot.