07-20-2016, 07:16 AM
oh dear, have i inadvertently stumbled into the 'let's all take ourselves incredibly seriously" thread again :/ sorry. serious face, engage.
anyway, and irregardless, i tend to prefer poems i don't fully understand [no, that isn't true. the poems i like tend to be ones i don't fully understand], at least initially. i say 'fully' because, with a few exceptions—da da and occasionally nonsense poems—, if one can read, then at least the basic units [the words] of a poem will be understood. the semantics of a poem may be difficult to comprehend [maybe even impossible, in any definitive sense], but if it does enough with the syntax and there is even the most minimal conformity to the structures of grammatical standards then one can usually find some kind of semantic meaning in it—if not, it seems like pretentiousness and pomposity to adamantly critique a poem, one which is surrealist, as being meaningless.
one would use different standards to critique a limerick to those used to critique a sonnet. of course, a lot of the standards will apply to both. and the same can be said for surreal peotry, stream of consciousness poetry, abstract poetry, etc. it is a skill and, the same as any other, it has dos and don'ts and takes practice to recognise what is going on, why something works and why something doesn't. and that is primarily why i find them so interesting. i read a Dylan Thomas poem and think "how did that work? how did i enjoy that while at the same time comprehending so little of its semantic meaning?" or even, why this da da poem, devoid of linguistic sense, is enjoyable and this other one is not. and it is this that is fascinating. this is surely one of the principle reasons we enjoy writing poems in the first place—and also the reason reading a fair number of them is tedious.
my advice with regards to the OP'ed questions would be, ask yourself are you really interested in that style of poetry. if you are, read a ton of it. read Finnegans Wake, read all of Joyces poetry [a lot of it is actually relatively traditional], read Beckett , Thomas and Elliott, Muldoon and Paulin; in fact, pull any modern poetry book off the book shelf in your local book shop open a page and you will more often than not be confronted with a very complex and difficult poem, one that you don't fully understand. read all of them. and you will start to 'understand' the language of that style and realise that it isn't just randomly putting words together, pretentiously, to baffle the reader and say "look at how deep i am", because those authors will stick out like a sore thumb. alternatively, if you are not into that sort of thing, maybe it is best to leave it be, as far as critique goes. if you get no initial enjoyment from reading a poem you don't understand, then what's the point in learning the language?
and just to end, from what i remember of the original Fry quote it was basically saying, if you are looking for meaning and you don't find it you may very well be upset. relieving oneself of the pressure of having to find 'The Meaning' of a poem may, somewhat counter intuitively, help you to find the meaning, or at least A Meaning and enjoy what might otherwise be a struggle.
anyway, and irregardless, i tend to prefer poems i don't fully understand [no, that isn't true. the poems i like tend to be ones i don't fully understand], at least initially. i say 'fully' because, with a few exceptions—da da and occasionally nonsense poems—, if one can read, then at least the basic units [the words] of a poem will be understood. the semantics of a poem may be difficult to comprehend [maybe even impossible, in any definitive sense], but if it does enough with the syntax and there is even the most minimal conformity to the structures of grammatical standards then one can usually find some kind of semantic meaning in it—if not, it seems like pretentiousness and pomposity to adamantly critique a poem, one which is surrealist, as being meaningless.
one would use different standards to critique a limerick to those used to critique a sonnet. of course, a lot of the standards will apply to both. and the same can be said for surreal peotry, stream of consciousness poetry, abstract poetry, etc. it is a skill and, the same as any other, it has dos and don'ts and takes practice to recognise what is going on, why something works and why something doesn't. and that is primarily why i find them so interesting. i read a Dylan Thomas poem and think "how did that work? how did i enjoy that while at the same time comprehending so little of its semantic meaning?" or even, why this da da poem, devoid of linguistic sense, is enjoyable and this other one is not. and it is this that is fascinating. this is surely one of the principle reasons we enjoy writing poems in the first place—and also the reason reading a fair number of them is tedious.
my advice with regards to the OP'ed questions would be, ask yourself are you really interested in that style of poetry. if you are, read a ton of it. read Finnegans Wake, read all of Joyces poetry [a lot of it is actually relatively traditional], read Beckett , Thomas and Elliott, Muldoon and Paulin; in fact, pull any modern poetry book off the book shelf in your local book shop open a page and you will more often than not be confronted with a very complex and difficult poem, one that you don't fully understand. read all of them. and you will start to 'understand' the language of that style and realise that it isn't just randomly putting words together, pretentiously, to baffle the reader and say "look at how deep i am", because those authors will stick out like a sore thumb. alternatively, if you are not into that sort of thing, maybe it is best to leave it be, as far as critique goes. if you get no initial enjoyment from reading a poem you don't understand, then what's the point in learning the language?
and just to end, from what i remember of the original Fry quote it was basically saying, if you are looking for meaning and you don't find it you may very well be upset. relieving oneself of the pressure of having to find 'The Meaning' of a poem may, somewhat counter intuitively, help you to find the meaning, or at least A Meaning and enjoy what might otherwise be a struggle.