01-09-2012, 03:11 PM
"Poetry is what remains after the drastic personal intervention. It reflects by one poetry, what is tangible not a poetry. The intervention occurs each time when somebody reads the poem. What stays always the same. What stays and is always the same. “
This addresses intrinsic worth.
For me this is a spurious argument, outside of a specific topic and usage in literary criticism which speaks of "killing the author" (seems as though I remember a thread where Leanne had mentioned this). It is the idea that the reader creates the worth of the piece. To take it out of context and apply it to things in general, such an argument makes no real sense. Yes the reader does impose worth on a thing, but a poem is not read by just one reader. If many people read the poem, and say it has worth, then we have to look back to the writer and say that he has composed something of worth, that it must have intrinsic worth a part from the author or the reader. The reader allows us to determine this, but the reader does not in fact imbue the poem with worth. If a person who makes furniture is successful and has a lot of customers wanting to buy his furniture would we make the ridicules statement and say, "It is not good craftsmanship that makes this furniture good, it is only that people view it as good that makes it so!"
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"The problem is probably not in translation but in the way of looking at another type of syntax."
Good translation are about making the syntax of another language clear, just as a good translation must translate idioms so that they make sense, so yes, it is a poor translation.
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"The poem must, as Mandelstamm stresses, speak without addressing itself to a concrete and known interlocutor; it resembles, in this respect, a message or letter cast adrift in a bottle, awaiting a destined but unknown reader to come."
In other words a poem should not be written as though to a specific individual. Did anyone not know this?
--and then the example is different than the statement. The person writing the note assumes that the person who will read it will know the language it is written in, and all that, that entails.
Other assumptions: The person will not be dead who reads the letter. It will not be a dog. It will be a person who can see. Even a bottle letter writer who must appeal to the widest of audiences still must assume limits on that audiences.
The truth is, is there is a wide gulf in terms of supposed audiences between writing it to your friend "Bob" and the audience of the bottle letter writer.
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“Once all the dead-wood has been removed from a poem - perhaps the poet didn't really have anything much of importance to say anyway.”
Actually, I often think that is the case.
I also think it is the case that people suspect that is the case and are afraid to closely examine what they have written for fear it is in fact true. On some poetry site it claimed to have 100,000 poets, or something to that effect. Really? Seems to me we either have an overabundance of poets compared to the past, or an overabundance of people who think they are poets and are not. You may call me elitist if you wish, but when someone thinks that Hallmark is the apex of poetry, and the goal to which one should strive, I am generally going to be of the opinion that the person is not really a poet. Of course that does not even matter, as there are plenty of those places who will for a small transfer of money from you to them be happy to create and support the delusion that you are in fact a poet, when you are not.
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Todd opened this with a teaser. "Poetry Shouldn't Communicate"
However the word "communicate" in how Todd characterizes the Hugo piece, is being used in the very restrictive sense of "solely to communicate information of a very mundane sort." Mainly, facts. Personally, I prefer my news to be more fact and less commentary as news is suppose to be, rather than the reverse--call me perverse!
The danger with this sort of statement is people will get it into their head that poetry shouldn't communicate anything at all, which I think is not what he is saying.
I definitely disagree on one point, it is not the language that is stale, but our descriptions, are metaphors, or that which we are talking about like the myth of Icarus!
(that's for Leanne) And yes, when he uses the term "language" he is referring to something different than the English language, or what one assumes is the general definition of the word “language” (a body of words and the systems for their use common to a people who are of the same community or nation, the same geographical area, or the same cultural tradition). He is referring to the "idiom of present communication", if I can be allowed to use the word "idiom" in an over-arching sense, rather than in a singular sense. So I mean it like in "idiom of the age". That is what it seems he means when he says "language", the “idiom of present communication”. However, as it is presented, that is not made plain. Personally I think it should be made plain. Using language inexactly is different than using “stale” language. Stale language is phrases that have been over used, and as a result, we are immune to their effect. All of us are at some time guilty of a stale usage of language, therefore we should strive from freshness in out description and metaphors and avoid trite or cliché phrases.
Points to write by:
If the author responds to something said about his poem with, know you just don't get what I am saying. I would suggest the fault is not in the reader, but in the author.
If an author means for the reader to understand something specific, then he should write in such a way that, that specific thing is understood by the reader. If he is not going to write in such a way that this will happen, then he should not take exception to whatever interpretation the reader imposes on the poem. In other words, if you write in such a way that the poem could been seen as inscrutable, then you should not take exception when it is called gibberish.
This addresses intrinsic worth.
For me this is a spurious argument, outside of a specific topic and usage in literary criticism which speaks of "killing the author" (seems as though I remember a thread where Leanne had mentioned this). It is the idea that the reader creates the worth of the piece. To take it out of context and apply it to things in general, such an argument makes no real sense. Yes the reader does impose worth on a thing, but a poem is not read by just one reader. If many people read the poem, and say it has worth, then we have to look back to the writer and say that he has composed something of worth, that it must have intrinsic worth a part from the author or the reader. The reader allows us to determine this, but the reader does not in fact imbue the poem with worth. If a person who makes furniture is successful and has a lot of customers wanting to buy his furniture would we make the ridicules statement and say, "It is not good craftsmanship that makes this furniture good, it is only that people view it as good that makes it so!"
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
"The problem is probably not in translation but in the way of looking at another type of syntax."
Good translation are about making the syntax of another language clear, just as a good translation must translate idioms so that they make sense, so yes, it is a poor translation.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
"The poem must, as Mandelstamm stresses, speak without addressing itself to a concrete and known interlocutor; it resembles, in this respect, a message or letter cast adrift in a bottle, awaiting a destined but unknown reader to come."
In other words a poem should not be written as though to a specific individual. Did anyone not know this?
--and then the example is different than the statement. The person writing the note assumes that the person who will read it will know the language it is written in, and all that, that entails.
Other assumptions: The person will not be dead who reads the letter. It will not be a dog. It will be a person who can see. Even a bottle letter writer who must appeal to the widest of audiences still must assume limits on that audiences.
The truth is, is there is a wide gulf in terms of supposed audiences between writing it to your friend "Bob" and the audience of the bottle letter writer.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Once all the dead-wood has been removed from a poem - perhaps the poet didn't really have anything much of importance to say anyway.”
Actually, I often think that is the case.
I also think it is the case that people suspect that is the case and are afraid to closely examine what they have written for fear it is in fact true. On some poetry site it claimed to have 100,000 poets, or something to that effect. Really? Seems to me we either have an overabundance of poets compared to the past, or an overabundance of people who think they are poets and are not. You may call me elitist if you wish, but when someone thinks that Hallmark is the apex of poetry, and the goal to which one should strive, I am generally going to be of the opinion that the person is not really a poet. Of course that does not even matter, as there are plenty of those places who will for a small transfer of money from you to them be happy to create and support the delusion that you are in fact a poet, when you are not.
--------------
Todd opened this with a teaser. "Poetry Shouldn't Communicate"
However the word "communicate" in how Todd characterizes the Hugo piece, is being used in the very restrictive sense of "solely to communicate information of a very mundane sort." Mainly, facts. Personally, I prefer my news to be more fact and less commentary as news is suppose to be, rather than the reverse--call me perverse!
The danger with this sort of statement is people will get it into their head that poetry shouldn't communicate anything at all, which I think is not what he is saying.
I definitely disagree on one point, it is not the language that is stale, but our descriptions, are metaphors, or that which we are talking about like the myth of Icarus!
(that's for Leanne) And yes, when he uses the term "language" he is referring to something different than the English language, or what one assumes is the general definition of the word “language” (a body of words and the systems for their use common to a people who are of the same community or nation, the same geographical area, or the same cultural tradition). He is referring to the "idiom of present communication", if I can be allowed to use the word "idiom" in an over-arching sense, rather than in a singular sense. So I mean it like in "idiom of the age". That is what it seems he means when he says "language", the “idiom of present communication”. However, as it is presented, that is not made plain. Personally I think it should be made plain. Using language inexactly is different than using “stale” language. Stale language is phrases that have been over used, and as a result, we are immune to their effect. All of us are at some time guilty of a stale usage of language, therefore we should strive from freshness in out description and metaphors and avoid trite or cliché phrases.Points to write by:
If the author responds to something said about his poem with, know you just don't get what I am saying. I would suggest the fault is not in the reader, but in the author.
If an author means for the reader to understand something specific, then he should write in such a way that, that specific thing is understood by the reader. If he is not going to write in such a way that this will happen, then he should not take exception to whatever interpretation the reader imposes on the poem. In other words, if you write in such a way that the poem could been seen as inscrutable, then you should not take exception when it is called gibberish.
How long after picking up the brush, the first masterpiece?
The goal is not to obfuscate that which is clear, but make clear that which isn't.
The goal is not to obfuscate that which is clear, but make clear that which isn't.