06-22-2019, 05:06 AM
(This post was last modified: 06-22-2019, 05:13 AM by RiverNotch.)
And so the conversation has reached a dead end. No, not just a dead end. A pit.
I will sound very very abrasive in saying this, but quite frankly, the question, and the way the question has been addressed by some of the participants in this discussion, has been, at best, *deserving* of such rancor.
If we look at the section of ‘The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics’ entitled ‘Verse and Prose’, it distinctly points out an intersection between prose and verse which could be labeled ‘poetry’. [side note: it also mentions the functions in modern society which Quix originally brought up]. So I think if we start looking for a distinction, we have to look into the study of prosody – verse theory. It is here where begin to delve into the ‘heightened language’ and covers topics being brought up in this discussion. According to the same publication, all [valid] definitions of poetry include the use of verse. Not sure how I feel about that comment personally, but there it is.
This. This is called pointless pedantry. This is called "winning the argument".
I think quix and billy gave the general versions, the aphoristic summations, if you will, of the actual answer to this question. Which, in the end, *does* exist -- only a real mooncalf says that art is everything, everything is art -- it's just that the answer is so fundamentally complex, one can't even begin to answer it in a single forum post. In a single philosophical work (say, Kant -- ba dum tss). In a single lifetime.
It's a question multiple people, even laypersons, struggle with all their lives, and no one in their right minds expects a single answer to it. No one in their right minds asks it for kicks -- they ask it for a reason. One asks, "what is poetry?", either because one is a child who knows nothing, or because one wants to figure out, "does my work count for poetry? am I a poet? are the people around me poets?" It's the same question Socrates posed when Diogenes showed him the plucked chicken, and his answer is similar to a lot of the attempts at a definitive answer here, from UB's "Poetry, in my mind, is about compression...." to OP's quite frankly irritating "Please define the term and explain how we 'heighten' language." You can't. No one can. When it comes to defining what humans are -- defining to the same level OP and, to a lesser extent, the likes of UB demand -- one has to define the entire human genome, and to distinguish it from the genomes of other animals, and define the physical expressions of said genomes, and why we humans recognize that this bunch of genes expressed through the Central Dogma is human and this bunch of genes expressed through the same is not. In other words, it's the work of a lifetime -- of multiple lifetimes -- that no one individual could ever fully comprehend.
Because poetry *is* like the visual arts. There's a gratingly Eurocentric viewpoint throughout this thread, that the visual artist can explain the principles behind his work, where the poet can't -- it assumes that the principles of composition and color theory are the same throughout all cultures, throughout all times. We need only look at European art, in fact, to realize that these principles have changed drastically over the past few decades; perspective technically didn't even exist throughout most of the Middle Ages, at least the materialist, "what the physical eye sees" perspective we consider as such today. The *satisfactory* answer to what is visual art is as dauntingly vast, as impossible to answer in one go, as the answer to what is poetry, or what is a human being -- at least, the answer as defined through philosophy, rather than through sweet, sweet intuition.
Rowens, I think, goes in the right direction with his second post. It is also, fundamentally, an aphoristic summation, but unlike quix's and billy's answers, it's comprehensive enough that it can actually lead us to what questions actually matter. To wit:
If you gather all the splinter connotations of the word 'poetry', it's a value effect that's overseeing the construction. You move from prosaic to heightened language by valuing the language itself. You can separate individual definitions of 'prosaic' and have prose as prose and prose as less or not at all heightened language and anything, not only words, that is flat or dull or just not valuable to such a degree in affect. This I'm writing now is prosaic. It's prose. It's not poetry, though whether or not it's poetic is someone's value judgment. And to maintain any valid value judgment, you have to do a lot of examining and comparing of what is mostly consensus judgment of similar and different things, the different being more difficult. Your poetry can add to the dimensions of value, as can your prosaic or poetic critique of value. What is prosaic and what is poetic? The form is never separate from poetic. With prosaic, it's not so important.
What composes heightened language? Why is heightened language composed as such? Why does Rowens think that what he's writing is prosaic, while I think it's very poetic, to the point that, taken in the context of this long and difficult discussion, it actually works as poetry, at least in the mode UB puts poetry in? Those are questions OP is getting to, but to what end? *For* what end? Because when he concludes his latest statement on the topic with
Ultimately, each person has their opinions, and will choose their own path. There is no right or wrong. Thoughts?
the same answer our dependable aphorists gave, I have to ask: what was he trying to do in the first place? What was he trying to present himself as? What was he trying to make of those he countered, those whom he implicitly insults with his opening post?
Although I'll be honest: without this discussion, I wouldn't have written the above, nor would Rowens have written his, or duke taught me another point that could help me argue why poetry is so much cooler than prose, so in that way, OP has done some great work.
I will sound very very abrasive in saying this, but quite frankly, the question, and the way the question has been addressed by some of the participants in this discussion, has been, at best, *deserving* of such rancor.
If we look at the section of ‘The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics’ entitled ‘Verse and Prose’, it distinctly points out an intersection between prose and verse which could be labeled ‘poetry’. [side note: it also mentions the functions in modern society which Quix originally brought up]. So I think if we start looking for a distinction, we have to look into the study of prosody – verse theory. It is here where begin to delve into the ‘heightened language’ and covers topics being brought up in this discussion. According to the same publication, all [valid] definitions of poetry include the use of verse. Not sure how I feel about that comment personally, but there it is.
This. This is called pointless pedantry. This is called "winning the argument".
I think quix and billy gave the general versions, the aphoristic summations, if you will, of the actual answer to this question. Which, in the end, *does* exist -- only a real mooncalf says that art is everything, everything is art -- it's just that the answer is so fundamentally complex, one can't even begin to answer it in a single forum post. In a single philosophical work (say, Kant -- ba dum tss). In a single lifetime.
It's a question multiple people, even laypersons, struggle with all their lives, and no one in their right minds expects a single answer to it. No one in their right minds asks it for kicks -- they ask it for a reason. One asks, "what is poetry?", either because one is a child who knows nothing, or because one wants to figure out, "does my work count for poetry? am I a poet? are the people around me poets?" It's the same question Socrates posed when Diogenes showed him the plucked chicken, and his answer is similar to a lot of the attempts at a definitive answer here, from UB's "Poetry, in my mind, is about compression...." to OP's quite frankly irritating "Please define the term and explain how we 'heighten' language." You can't. No one can. When it comes to defining what humans are -- defining to the same level OP and, to a lesser extent, the likes of UB demand -- one has to define the entire human genome, and to distinguish it from the genomes of other animals, and define the physical expressions of said genomes, and why we humans recognize that this bunch of genes expressed through the Central Dogma is human and this bunch of genes expressed through the same is not. In other words, it's the work of a lifetime -- of multiple lifetimes -- that no one individual could ever fully comprehend.
Because poetry *is* like the visual arts. There's a gratingly Eurocentric viewpoint throughout this thread, that the visual artist can explain the principles behind his work, where the poet can't -- it assumes that the principles of composition and color theory are the same throughout all cultures, throughout all times. We need only look at European art, in fact, to realize that these principles have changed drastically over the past few decades; perspective technically didn't even exist throughout most of the Middle Ages, at least the materialist, "what the physical eye sees" perspective we consider as such today. The *satisfactory* answer to what is visual art is as dauntingly vast, as impossible to answer in one go, as the answer to what is poetry, or what is a human being -- at least, the answer as defined through philosophy, rather than through sweet, sweet intuition.
Rowens, I think, goes in the right direction with his second post. It is also, fundamentally, an aphoristic summation, but unlike quix's and billy's answers, it's comprehensive enough that it can actually lead us to what questions actually matter. To wit:
If you gather all the splinter connotations of the word 'poetry', it's a value effect that's overseeing the construction. You move from prosaic to heightened language by valuing the language itself. You can separate individual definitions of 'prosaic' and have prose as prose and prose as less or not at all heightened language and anything, not only words, that is flat or dull or just not valuable to such a degree in affect. This I'm writing now is prosaic. It's prose. It's not poetry, though whether or not it's poetic is someone's value judgment. And to maintain any valid value judgment, you have to do a lot of examining and comparing of what is mostly consensus judgment of similar and different things, the different being more difficult. Your poetry can add to the dimensions of value, as can your prosaic or poetic critique of value. What is prosaic and what is poetic? The form is never separate from poetic. With prosaic, it's not so important.
What composes heightened language? Why is heightened language composed as such? Why does Rowens think that what he's writing is prosaic, while I think it's very poetic, to the point that, taken in the context of this long and difficult discussion, it actually works as poetry, at least in the mode UB puts poetry in? Those are questions OP is getting to, but to what end? *For* what end? Because when he concludes his latest statement on the topic with
Ultimately, each person has their opinions, and will choose their own path. There is no right or wrong. Thoughts?
the same answer our dependable aphorists gave, I have to ask: what was he trying to do in the first place? What was he trying to present himself as? What was he trying to make of those he countered, those whom he implicitly insults with his opening post?
Although I'll be honest: without this discussion, I wouldn't have written the above, nor would Rowens have written his, or duke taught me another point that could help me argue why poetry is so much cooler than prose, so in that way, OP has done some great work.