Allusion in poetry

[milo]

Hello

Do you use allusion in your own writing?  Do you enjoy when other writers use allusion?

Allusion is a deliberate reference to another work used to enhance a poem.  I used to phrase that as another literary work but I have seen it used to effect with other sorts of art as well (think ekphrastic poetry)

I love allusion in poetry.  The reason I think it is so strong is because of the power and efficiency of it.  With a single phrase a poem can lean on a complete work, adding metaphor, tone, story elements, etc.  If you use any programming languages, you can almost think of it like importing a library instead of writing all of your functions from scratch.

When do I think it works?  I think it works when it is used to enhance a poem, when the mention directly leads to a more powerful or evocative poem and when it points or enhances the central metaphor. The piece alluded to should be well known enough that the majority of the poem reading public can recognize it and process it.

When doesn't it work?  

• When the understanding and enjoyment of the poem depends on the allusion - some readers may not get it.  Also, a poem should be a discrete work, if it does not stand on its own, did you even write it?
  
• When it seems to just state "look at me, the author, I am so smart and well-read!"  This is disruptive to the experience of the poem.
  

I can use examples either from my own writing or from well known works and we can discuss what the allusion adds if there is any interest.

Thanks

[rowens]

Magpiety. A vague, even if strong, adoration or appreciation of things, I call them tokens, for their own sake. Symbols, Objects, Ideas, etc.
This is also Love and Agon. Taking what is, repurposing it.
This can be Allusion in Poetry. This can be random-sounding statements in Aqua Teen Hunger Force.


Allusion is a magic word that will draw me like a dog-whistle. Like Influence and Inspiration. These are slip and slide playful words. 

For me, Order is Truth, Reality is Nothing. Chaos is Order. This makes sense, while including that nonsense is part of sense. Mystery is part of what's known.

When I write Fiction, I like to imagine the atmosphere and let happenings and figures emerge out of it. That's also how I experience the world.
I have a hard time retaining what I hear and listen to, as I'm always making connections to specific things, like songs and past experiences and movies and people and things they say and do. When I'm reading, I breeze over most things until something pulls me out of that daze of personal allusions.

It is also painful to write, as I have bad coordination skills, yet there is a rush of giddiness as the fatigue and discomfort associates with musicality and symbolism.


So for me, reading and writing and even watching tv and listening to music is laborious and sexy and addictive and annoying.
I studied the correspondences in magickal lore, and that helped disengage certain obsessive personal connections while replacing with others.
I see poetry and pop culture and folklore, and experience them as such, as people who truly believe in religions believe and experience.
I read poetry like people read the Bible. I skip around and pounce on and enjoy the parts that fit my current mood.

That is how I read and write. Allusions are framing devices and tonal and symbolic bridges. I remember Hunter S. Thompson referring to T. S. Eliot as writing poems like a bricklayer. And I see all of Hart Crane as a manic positivity even in despair, and Eliot as depressive ecstasy. And I mean that literally, aware that the word 'literal' concerns words and meanings and definitions, so literal is another level of figuration.

I read Eliot as a man making a reality out of a reality that's already made. To me, that's love. Making things out of things.

For me, love exists. And that is the giddy clash of connections and correspondences, physical and mental and true and symbolic. These are all the same to me, simply reshuffling and making distinctions for distinctions' sakes, weight and counterweight, if I was you I'd be sitting where you are, and since I'm not, I'm able to see you. That.


I see no and experience no difference between the news, a bible, a poem, a novel, a cartoon, a wrestling match and what is happening right in front of me other than symbolic. Yet, some of those symbols can kill me or hurt me or make me sad or angry. 

That's how I read and write poetry. I read literary criticism to strengthen my relation to readers and poets. When I read and write poems, I continue to make my own connections and savagely repurpose poets' poems. Their symbols and meanings and intentions. Just like people do the bible. Guerilla Ontology already exists: I'm glad. I didn't have to make it up. 


When I don't drink alcohol, I have no interest in other people, except for attractive women, and so as to not write about that only, I simply play with tones and allusions and baroque and burlesque rhythms of my sensibility. Same with poems and allusions, they only interest me in as far as they tune my nervous system. In fact, all I am is a nervous system. When I drink alcohol, I am reborn as a man. No reason [slip: I meant wonder], Christ and Dionysos live and die with the vineyards. I believe in that literally.

And that is what allusion means to me. I could tell you what allusion really means, but to do so, I'd simply be telling you something I heard someone else say and/or witnessed them do in their poems.

[milo]

Magpiety. A vague, even if strong, adoration or appreciation of things, I call them tokens, for their own sake. Symbols, Objects, Ideas, etc.
This is also Love and Agon. Taking what is, repurposing it.
This can be Allusion in Poetry. This can be random-sounding statements in Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

I like the idea of magpiety as neologism for the tendency to collect disconnected bits throughout life .  Unfortunately, it is already a portmonteu of magpie and piety created by Hood to refernce people chattering on about religion which, frankly, is a better use anyway. Maybe something could still be one with crows or racoons?

Allusion is a magic word that will draw me like a dog-whistle. Like Influence and Inspiration. These are slip and slide playful words. 

For me, Order is Truth, Reality is Nothing. Chaos is Order. This makes sense, while including that nonsense is part of sense. Mystery is part of what's known.

When I write Fiction, I like to imagine the atmosphere and let happenings and figures emerge out of it. That's also how I experience the world.
I have a hard time retaining what I hear and listen to, as I'm always making connections to specific things, like songs and past experiences and movies and people and things they say and do. When I'm reading, I breeze over most things until something pulls me out of that daze of personal allusions.

It is also painful to write, as I have bad coordination skills, yet there is a rush of giddiness as the fatigue and discomfort associates with musicality and symbolism.

  This is mostly good through here.  I was originally turned off by the 3 cliches to start it and considered skimming but I am glad i didn't - just something to consider, you don't want to lose your reader.

I like your technique for writing fiction.  When I write fiction I tend to have some idea of character archetypes and the story I want to tell and then I just struggle through it linearly.  When I write poetry, it almost always starts with a funny observation and then I try to think what this could be a metaphor for.  For example, i know a girl who microblades her eybrows every 3 months.  She paid to have her eyebrows lasered off so she can pay to have them tatooed back on every 3 months.  This has to be a metaphor for something so I think there is a poem in there.

So for me, reading and writing and even watching tv and listening to music is laborious and sexy and addictive and annoying.
I studied the correspondences in magickal lore, and that helped disengage certain obsessive personal connections while replacing with others.
I see poetry and pop culture and folklore, and experience them as such, as people who truly believe in religions believe and experience.
I read poetry like people read the Bible. I skip around and pounce on and enjoy the parts that fit my current mood.

I think it is fine to occasionally remind the reader that your thoughts are centered in your narrator's ego but at times the "for meism" gets a little redundant. The comjparison of poetry to the bible is fine.  I don't know if the skipping around works for me as it feels the comparison falls apart there.

That is how I read and write. Allusions are framing devices and tonal and symbolic bridges. I remember Hunter S. Thompson referring to T. S. Eliot as writing poems like a bricklayer. And I see all of Hart Crane as a manic positivity even in despair, and Eliot as depressive ecstasy. And I mean that literally, aware that the word 'literal' concerns words and meanings and definitions, so literal is another level of figuration.

This section right here is probably the best

I read Eliot as a man making a reality out of a reality that's already made. To me, that's love. Making things out of things.

yah, I love Eliot and every discussion of allusion will inevitably bring him up but, I feel many times Eliot obsfucates his metaphor through allusion rather than strengthens is.

For me, love exists. And that is the giddy clash of connections and correspondences, physical and mental and true and symbolic. These are all the same to me, simply reshuffling and making distinctions for distinctions' sakes, weight and counterweight, if I was you I'd be sitting where you are, and since I'm not, I'm able to see you. That.

  This is all good and definitely solid references to poetic creationism.  I think it is good you continue to loop back to the original subject through inference but I also like you drawing the reader in here.

I see no and experience no difference between the news, a bible, a poem, a novel, a cartoon, a wrestling match and what is happening right in front of me other than symbolic. Yet, some of those symbols can kill me or hurt me or make me sad or angry. 

That's how I read and write poetry. I read literary criticism to strengthen my relation to readers and poets. When I read and write poems, I continue to make my own connections and savagely repurpose poets' poems. Their symbols and meanings and intentions. Just like people do the bible. Guerilla Ontology already exists: I'm glad. I didn't have to make it up. 

This part here loses interest and steam a little.  The beginning feels like a restatement of what you said much stronger earlier.  Also, calling back to the narrator, i know I already called it out but the "for me-ism" is getting a little tedious.

When I don't drink alcohol, I have no interest in other people, except for attractive women, and so as to not write about that only, I simply play with tones and allusions and baroque and burlesque rhythms of my sensibility. Same with poems and allusions, they only interest me in as far as they tune my nervous system. In fact, all I am is a nervous system. When I drink alcohol, I am reborn as a man. No reason [slip: I meant wonder], Christ and Dionysos live and die with the vineyards. I believe in that literally.

And that is what allusion means to me. I could tell you what allusion really means, but to do so, I'd simply be telling you something I heard someone else say and/or witnessed them do in their poems.

The ending is fine as a summary.  I probably would have preferred if you used allusion and maybe you did and I just missed it.  It does remind me that I didn't point out in my preamble that there is a difference between reference and allusion and some do confuse the two.

Thanks for commenting

[rowens]

It occurs to me that For-Meism occurs to me in two ways: The first is that everything everyone says is tedious and redundant for me. Secondly, framing everything with For Me allows people to, at least, realize that I'm talking about both what things mean to me, not what is real or true, and that whatever doesn't mean anything to me is irrelevant. I also found a way of experiencing this Magickally, as there is One Pillar where everything I say and do is Creative Certainty for myself, which keeps me involved in things at all, and there is a balancing Pillar which sees that the same is true for everyone else, that is, they also must stand and move from somewhere, so I balance my Conceit with plenty of room for theirs.

The best Defense is Honesty. The greatest Offense is Love. Love is offensive.

When I don't drink alcohol, I consider everything I say before I say it, and everything everyone else says before I reply to it. What I've learned is that nothing I say is worth saying unless it has some resonance from my pov, and the same is true for what matters about what I hear others say. When I'm not drinking, nothing matters to me, so everything I say is pointless to me, and I see that it may or may not matter to others. So I say things anyway. And I engage with others as though what they say matters. When I'm drinking or excited in any other form, things do actually matter to or for me, and maybe or maybe not to or for others. I see that Baudelaire, while not necessarily talking about alcohol, also meant this in his "Prose-Poem" called Get Drunk!

When one is drunk, all is spontaneous and true and real and important. I would encourage us all to read that poem, and get drunk on whatever floats our boat in and out of worlds, cliches, sense and nonsense. As the play is the thing, and the giddiness is the spider on the one dollar bill.


As for losing the reader, I know the reader or care for them (I'm a multiculturalist) no more or less than I do for what I'm saying. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't.

I made a few references here, and maybe one allusion.

[milo]

Certainly quite a few references and it mostly reminded me that I stated the initial definition of an allusion wrong in that it should be an indirect reference but, no sense patching it up now.

An yes, I think you use for me-ism mostly effectively as I tried to make clear. But there is a balance and I am not saying it is definitely over it, just become noticeable to me. For example, consider the following:

Form me, for me m me me for for for, me for me formeformeformeforme for me me eme mkeme emem eme . . .

Can we agree that is too much for me? Somewhere between that and nothing is probably the perfect balance. I thought you were a little over.

I like the strophe about alcohol. i never get drunk myself but I do drink and I can definitely attest to the joy it brings. Up to a point. Once over it, I cannot do other things I enjoy. but of course, why was Burton build on Trent?

Thanks

[rowens]

For Me as context and For Me as the actual words "For Me" are both accurate and valuable to the form. For me, For me. You mentioned Gertrude Stein the other day. Repetition is useful, and so is indulgence. You can find anything anywhere to reference and allude. My favorite literary criticism is by D. H. Lawrence. Did you ever read his book on American Literature, his essays on Whitman, Melville and Poe, particularly? I don't remember if the Melville bit is an essay about Melville or he goes into Melville when he is "supposed" to be talking about something else.

In any event, I've found a solution to the problem. Stories within stories. There can be the indulgence of telling stories and anecdotes, and within those, one can find stories, and practice negative capability, which solves the problem, if there is one, between the abyss between Shakespeare and Tolstoy who write, apparently characters and universal awareness, and writers who get by on personality and quaintness, and whether there is a difference. Quality and art brut wrestle in the process, and we have a spectacle either way. And some will turn it off and some will find hidden messages in it and start cults or schools.

I'm fine with any of this.

[milo]

I don't remember mentioning Stein though I may have, I hope it was something clever. I have not read Lawrence's book on criticism. I remember you mentioning it several years back and I read the first few pages but never finished it.

Story telling - imo - is the most powerful and important human ability of all and certainly you interweave quite a bit into your comments so that is more than welcome.

I don't want to get caught up on the for me-ism - if it doesn't bother you or anyone else, let's just drop it.

Something about what you wrote here makes me think about white space or negative space and not just literal white space in poetry or negative space in art but the figurative white space of the elements we leave out if that makes any sense to you

[rowens]

I write out of atmospheres. There is a feeling or feeling-tone, if you allow for that term, from which things begin happening. And I write them. Sometimes that lasts for weeks, and I can make a story. Often it doesn't last. This is the same with reading and watching. I don't have much interest in story. I'm more interested in atmosphere and sometimes in character dynamics. I've actually made my own "religion" out of Cosmic Horror, Analogue Horror and Folk Horror. The very atmosphere, without the story or reaction of characters. Horror movies interest me in the bridge between mundane and strange, I lose interest when the heroes learn what is going on and the final fight takes place.

How this relates to allusion is that I feel everything through connection or collective resonance, but not through narrative.
Sometimes I watch a movie because I'd like to lay pipe to the actress, but it doesn't end there, and the actress becomes a fictional character that I write a screenplay around. And within that screenplay, I'm able to manage plot and narrative. But the whole movie, in my creative process, revolves around setting and music and the way the actors and actresses look and move and the sounds of their voices. So the storyline is my weak point. That's why I find inspiration in David Lynch and Adult Swim cartoon material.

The way I'm writing here is also demonstrating how out of that dark space, the very white of the screen is pulsing with the need to be filled: and I'm simply saying whatever comes into my mind.

Hopefully you or others can do something with any of this. Well, hope isn't relevant. But I have nothing else to say, though I can pull anything out of anything. I've said enough in this thread, unless you "trigger" me to say something else. I am using the term 'trigger' in a neutral sense.

[busker]

When doesn't it work?  

• When the understanding and enjoyment of the poem depends on the allusion - some readers may not get it.  Also, a poem should be a discrete work, if it does not stand on its own, did you even write it?
  

Eliot has been mentioned a number of times, but I'd like to mention him again. 
Allusion can still work if the reader doesn't 'get' it in its entirety.
I can't think of too many people who'd have read Kyd, Mallarme, and the Upanishads, or can recall passages from Wagner, but that doesn't stop them from enjoying The Wasteland. Here, knowing that there is a reference to something weighty is enough. There might even be a charm in not knowing the exact context of the original, which may be banal once it is no longer enigmatic.

[milo]

When doesn't it work?  

• When the understanding and enjoyment of the poem depends on the allusion - some readers may not get it.  Also, a poem should be a discrete work, if it does not stand on its own, did you even write it?
  

Eliot has been mentioned a number of times, but I'd like to mention him again. 
Allusion can still work if the reader doesn't 'get' it in its entirety.
I can't think of too many people who'd have read Kyd, Mallarme, and the Upanishads, or can recall passages from Wagner, but that doesn't stop them from enjoying The Wasteland. Here, knowing that there is a reference to something weighty is enough. There might even be a charm in not knowing the exact context of the original, which may be banal once it is no longer enigmatic.

Well, of course, there are no real rules, per se, to the use of allusion and I mostly just listed things I thought worked and didn't work with allusion.  The Waste Lands might just be the exception that proves the rule though as it is the exception that proves so many rules.  Every copy of The Waste Lands I have ever read had foot notes and I couldn't imagine reading it without them.  Also, I think with The Waste Lands, there are so many, it is obvious it is using allusion and that is not always the case.