04-26-2014, 09:33 AM
If I say it's a poem, it's a poem.
If I wanted to be more objective, I might say something like, "If it's published as a poem, then, historically speaking, it is a poem. If it is widely circulated enough, and if enough people claim loudly enough that it is or is not a poem, then, historically speaking, it will influence our perception of what is and is not a poem."
And I might go so far as to say that the history of verse is a history of unpoemish innovations that come to be called poetry.
Dickinson was quoted early on by Erthona--we like her so well because she created us out of thin air, crafting unpoemish poems that became central to our definition of what a poem is.
For an earlier example, print technology shifted the defining onus of poetry from the aural to the visual, how a piece looks and reads and "sounds" on the page. Dickinson, whose poems are very much poems in this sense--literary rather than musical works--could hardly be termed a poet in this earlier, musical sense, dependent as it is on public performance, vocal talent, instrumental training, &c.
The same people who will cry most loudly that this or that is not a poem--as, for example, is so characteristically true of the response of more pedantic readers to some spoken word or hip hop--are the same who would have told Dickinson that her poems weren't poems.
There were, maybe, seagulls.
In my experience--and I acknowledge the following as a personal bias that carries little authority into the realm of the objective or even stereotypical--the people who cry "not poem" have tended towards a certain kind of personality and a certain level of skill.
They have been, by and large, individuals with a degree of literacy--institutional, social, cultural, linguistic and otherwise--but not much imagination. (That's not quite fair--let me at least say, they have not been savants and have had a somewhat restrained sense of vision.)
They have also been, I have found, interested less in the substance of rational discourse than its semblance.
A fact that is, to my mind, somewhat self-apparent in the relevant claim itself: "This is not poetry." This claim tends to be asserted on the basis of a mystical personal authority derived from communion with the universal-historical nature of verse--all while proclaiming itself to be a guardian of objective reason and culture--and is, as far as I can tell, largely impervious to the argumentative force of history, contemporary example, expert opinion, or the dictionary.
If I wanted to be more objective, I might say something like, "If it's published as a poem, then, historically speaking, it is a poem. If it is widely circulated enough, and if enough people claim loudly enough that it is or is not a poem, then, historically speaking, it will influence our perception of what is and is not a poem."
And I might go so far as to say that the history of verse is a history of unpoemish innovations that come to be called poetry.
Dickinson was quoted early on by Erthona--we like her so well because she created us out of thin air, crafting unpoemish poems that became central to our definition of what a poem is.
For an earlier example, print technology shifted the defining onus of poetry from the aural to the visual, how a piece looks and reads and "sounds" on the page. Dickinson, whose poems are very much poems in this sense--literary rather than musical works--could hardly be termed a poet in this earlier, musical sense, dependent as it is on public performance, vocal talent, instrumental training, &c.
The same people who will cry most loudly that this or that is not a poem--as, for example, is so characteristically true of the response of more pedantic readers to some spoken word or hip hop--are the same who would have told Dickinson that her poems weren't poems.
There were, maybe, seagulls.
In my experience--and I acknowledge the following as a personal bias that carries little authority into the realm of the objective or even stereotypical--the people who cry "not poem" have tended towards a certain kind of personality and a certain level of skill.
They have been, by and large, individuals with a degree of literacy--institutional, social, cultural, linguistic and otherwise--but not much imagination. (That's not quite fair--let me at least say, they have not been savants and have had a somewhat restrained sense of vision.)
They have also been, I have found, interested less in the substance of rational discourse than its semblance.
A fact that is, to my mind, somewhat self-apparent in the relevant claim itself: "This is not poetry." This claim tends to be asserted on the basis of a mystical personal authority derived from communion with the universal-historical nature of verse--all while proclaiming itself to be a guardian of objective reason and culture--and is, as far as I can tell, largely impervious to the argumentative force of history, contemporary example, expert opinion, or the dictionary.