Clarity—from the Proverbs of Tharmas Erthona

[milo]

Sorry milo, but you are very limited in your thinking if you think communication is limited to a verbal message. 

I do not think communication is limited to a verbal message but I do think communication is limited to the transmission of /information/.  Dictionaries are in agreement with me on this.

Pleasure is a form of communication. Any kind of emotional response engendered by the poem is a form of communication.

This statement is not correct.  Emotional responses are /responses/, not communication.  You can have a response to a communication but taht is not the communication itself which is limited to the transmission of the information.  Any responses to the transmission lie outside the communication paradigm.  Part of the problem is because the response is never transmitted back to the the author.

 However, my question is this. If you are not communicating anything and the reader does not receive any form of communication what is the point of what you are doing? 

I thought I answered this clearly enough.  the point is for enjoyment - both as a reader and as a writer.

what makes it different from what a chicken scratches in the dirt. The chicken is not trying to communicate anything, nor does he communicate anything, although I am sure he does derive some pleasure so pleasure from doing so. Unless you are a chicken, it is ridiculous to assert you are not trying to communicate something. If you say you only do it for pleasure, then why post it for others to read. What are they suppose to do with such a puddle of goo.

hopefully, they are to enjoy it.  I think you are also leaving off the even more important role of myself as a reader.  As a reader of poetry, I am in no way interested in being communicated with.  If the purpose of writing was to communicate (send a message) than the purpose of reading must be to communicate (receive a message) but I daresay no one reads poetry to receive a message.

 Besides, your own writing condemns you, as they have always seemed very forthright in trying to communicate, or am I wrong and it was just really empty headed blather?

I have never written poetry as an attempt to communicate - it is far too clumsy a medium.


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