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Dec 29, 2009, 3:04am

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AuthorTopic: How to Read Poetry (Read 404 times)
jerry
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Re: How to Read Poetry
« Reply #15 on Oct 30, 2009, 8:33am »
It appears I wasn't clear enough in my original two posts. (Coming from me, I'm not at all surprised.)

I approach poetry like I do literature; or, perhaps I should say I approach literature like I do poetry. Being a writer myself, I was taught that the writer should make every word count. If I write "In the hour before dawn, the world lay wrapped in a blue veil", I could just be describing what the world looks like before the sun has risen. Then again, why not be more succinct? Because, perhaps, I meant more than the literal reading expresses. I could be setting a specific mood or describing the state of the world before morning comes or even alluding to a theme about how we see the world through different filters at different times--or all three and the literal meaning. So, as a reader, I keep in mind that the author chose to write what he did and how he did it for a reason.

"There's no law that you have to like every great poet. And I don't believe in making yourself like things just because "everyone else" likes them."

Exactly, which is why I wrote in my second post, "Even if I don't like the same work that others do, I at least want to understand why the classics are so respected." That's why I'm here. I'm not looking to force myself into liking anyone, but hoping to better understand why, say, Ezra Pound is held in such great regard. Maybe there's something beautiful there I'm missing. (Is confusion beautiful?)

"Keep in mind that no one we publish is Immortal, Great, or Indispensable. Not yet, anyway. Some of our authors have collected more prestige than others, but you shouldn't open the magazine with the idea that you MUST LIKE EVERYTHING or else go back to reading Dan Brown."

Thank goodness I don't read Dan Brown. ;) There's something I find shallow about cheap thrills. When I read, I most often don't want to be simply moved on the curiosity level, but the emotional and intellectual level, too. What makes fiction and poetry so unique and powerful is how they can express insights of reality through being. Sure, you can glean from The Great Gatsby that clinging to and pursuing a hopeless dream of love, long lost in the past, will only end in tragedy. But what made the novel so profound to me was how Fitzgerald expressed this through the characters' being, through the expression of words and images, which made it feel as though I witnessed it on a personal and emotional level. You don't get necessarily get that with the non-fiction description. (Oh, no, now I'm rhyming!)

"Remember this when you read modern poetry: it tends to lean awfully hard on you, the reader. It is often arrogant, even if unintentionally. It forgets that it is not OWED a reading! Some of it intentionally cuts you out of the conversation. So don't let it get to you. Read what you like. Ignore what doesn't do it for you."

Hmm, in light of what I said above, perhaps poetry that is just "a flash of fireworks" isn't what I'm looking for. (It probably shouldn't surprise you that I don't like fireworks.) This discussion has proved very enlightening. Thank you.









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meredith
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Re: How to Read Poetry
« Reply #16 on Oct 30, 2009, 4:44pm »
I've gotten a lot out of this discussion as well; thanks for starting it.

Your approach to reading novels works fine with poetry... as you said, every word should count, and we need to pay close attention to the possible meanings the author could have had in mind. And you nail how prose fiction and poetry both express insight "through being." The only adjustment you need to make is probably this: to realize that poetry tends to be more compact than prose - that it moves from line to line instead of from paragraph to paragraph. The building blocks of meaning tend to be smaller or denser or something - maybe I'm not expressing this very well.

It seems to me that what you mainly want to know - and forgive me if I'm wrong - what the deal is with *modern* poetry. That is, the kind of experimental and/or free verse poetry that started being written in the later 1800's. Hopkins, whose poems you found difficult, is sometimes called a forerunner of modern poetry. Walt Whitman was one of the first writers of "modern" free verse. In the 20th century free verse became fashionable and then mainstream. You asked about Ezra Pound, and I can tell you why he's important: he helped popularize free verse, and he promoted the work of Yeats and Frost and Eliot, among others. He helped Eliot edit "The Waste Land" into something much better than it had been, and that poem went on to have a huge influence. So he did a lot for poetry besides writing it. As for his own work: it is, as you say, confused. I don't know of anyone who thinks that he was great through and through - only a small number of pieces are considered "classics." Some people hold him in great regard, but others dismiss him as a crank. I think that you could accept some of his poems, though - look up "The River-Merchant's Wife" and his other translations of Chinese poetry. For myself, I can only say that yes, there IS something beautiful in his work. Or rather, there are certain poems and bits of poems there that are beautiful. But you have to dig for them. I have a very thin little volume of his selected work, and it's enough for me.
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jerry
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Re: How to Read Poetry
« Reply #17 on Oct 31, 2009, 9:52am »
Bernado and Katy: Those were some great poetry selections. "As kingfisher catch fire . . ." is especially beautiful just to listen to, but it gave me an impression there's something more to it. That's what I like about any great work: a surface impression that radiates with great depth of beauty--to encourage a closer look, a second thought.

With that in mind, Meredith brings to the forefront a prime concern of mine: If modern poetry too often fails to bring about this surface impression, what is it missing? Is there something new introduced in the modern style that I should be aware of? My impression is, modern art in general, which includes poetry, challenges the traditional way of looking at things. Williams's "Red Wheelbarrow", therefore, really epitomizes modernity, for better or worse. On the surface, you merely see the bare essential description of seemingly random colors and images thrown together with very little apparent context. Instead of lulling you to dig deeper, it forces you to find something of worth on your own, whether it was true to the poem or not. Doesn't this over-stress the subjectivity of beauty to the point of relativism? I don't know. Perhaps the poem has some merit because beauty can still be found if you move away from the comfort of tradition for a moment to see what else is out there. The beauty, I guess, is by embodying the unorthodox, it simultaneously expresses its message of challenging traditional perceptions. The acknowledgment of the challenging psychological effect on the reader really seems to be the point, because in doing so, it defeats the traditional perception. And yet, it doesn't satisfy. I can see the potential in this approach, but if modernity attempts to abandons tradition to defeat, we seem to lose more than we gain.

Robert Frost seems incredibly apt here, with his poem "The Gift Outright": (http://www.bartleby.com/73/475.html).

All of this brings me to back to Ezra Pound. I have, indeed, read "The River-Merchant's Wife" before and found some beauty in it. But then, upon recommendation from a book on fine English and American literature, I peruse "In a Station of the Metro": (http://www.bartleby.com/104/106.html). I don't know what to make of it. As I was researching Pound, I came upon an essay written by T.S. Eliot, titled, Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry. This excerpt from the beginning is particularly relevant:

There are twenty people who have their opinion of him for every one who has read his writings with any care. Of those twenty, there will be some who are shocked, some who are ruffled, some who are irritated, and one or two whose sense of dignity is outraged. The twenty-first critic will probably be one who knows and admires some of the poems, but who either says: "Pound is primarily a scholar, a translator," or "Pound's early verse was beautiful; his later work shows nothing better than the itch for advertisement, a mischievous desire to be annoying, or a childish desire to be original." There is a third type of reader, rare enough, who has perceived Mr. Pound for some years, who has followed his career intelligently, and who recognizes its consistency.


I don't doubt Pound's great influence on modern literature. And based on Eliot's own admission, your thoughts, Meredith, on Pound's poetry are consistent with the majority of people. If that poem above is any indication, there's little wonder left to the imagination as to why.



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gabrielolearnik
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Re: How to Read Poetry
« Reply #18 on Nov 19, 2009, 7:34am »
Dear Meredith

I consider myself cornered! :)

With regard to all my poetry, the title is the key to interpretation. Horae Mortis is the hour of death, so far, so obvious. So the character is dying in the poem. He veers between delirium and ecstasy. To achieve the effect, I've put in images which appear to be random but have some basis- so, for example, the angel of death is supposed to be so lovely that death is easy for the just. Usually this is rendered by the image of death as a beautiful woman (Neil Gaiman, Sandman). I've preferred to steal Oscar Wilde's thought at the end of The Selfish Giant and make death into a small boy or Christ-figure.

There is a lot more, mostly super-esoteric. There are Polynesian legends about death and bananas for instance. I don't expect anyone to pick this up consciously. But the people who composed the legends clearly saw a link and maybe a fragment of understanding survives in passing.

I will leave you with a fairly intelligible poem about a Russian exile and nostalgia.

All the best

Gabriel

Émigré


He stewed his thoughts like tea leaves,
fingering the samovar
the metal warm in lattices.
The notches too thin for fingers.
It might have been an heirloom
(but rust has no heritage).

The walls bent with icons-
faces of gold and tin plate,
white glasses of vodka, books
and the borrowed illumination
deftly stolen from an unheard Russian dawn.
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immortaldiamond
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Re: How to Read Poetry
« Reply #19 on Nov 26, 2009, 6:05pm »

Quote:
Doesn't this over-stress the subjectivity of beauty to the point of relativism?


I feel very much the same, jerry. In my opinion, one of the main purposes of poetry is to express yourself. So to leave the meaning of your poem entirely up to the reader seems to defeat that purpose.

Of course, it is possible that if I read more poetry of this type, I would learn to appreciate the meanings which are currently hidden from me.

By the way, I would like to hear what others think of The Red Wheelbarrow--to me it seems exceedingly un-poetic, and I would like to see what others find in it.
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jerry
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Re: How to Read Poetry
« Reply #20 on Nov 29, 2009, 10:42am »
Immortaldiamond: I'm beginning to wonder if what each reader says about Williams' poetry says more about the reader than what the poem itself expresses (whatever that is). I have a hunch that if you told a group of ten people to read The Red Wheelbarrow for the first time and demand of them what they believe it means, you'd get ten different responses. Shouldn't all good poetry, thematically, be expressively self-contained? I suppose that if this poem does anything well, it's question what it is we consider poetry. Not exactly what I'm looking for in poetry.
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bedefan
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Re: How to Read Poetry
« Reply #21 on Nov 30, 2009, 11:34am »
Hmm... It seems that if you can rephrase the meaning of a poem in a few succinct sentences of exposition, without much loss, then the poem was probably no good. A good poem, like good music I think, is always going to be wholly itself. So the most accurate answer to "what does 'Red Wheelbarrow' mean?" would be something like, "Well, it means: 'so much depends / upon / the red wheel / barrow...'" Just like if someone asked "What does Beethoven's 5th say about our common humanity?" or whatever, the only accurate answer is: "Dum dum dum DUMMM!"

Everything else is interpretation, so of course there's going to be a different answer about what a poem means for each person. Diversity of interpretation qua its status as diversity is not bad; in fact, unless sin intervenes, diversity is rich and fruitful and glorious (read a few Church Fathers' exegeses of a single passage of Scripture, that's the kind of diversity I'm talking about.)

As for Classical poetry, it was profoundly complex and admitted of countless interpretations. Try to figure out what Vergil *means* by the symbolic structure of the Aeneid and you won't be able to come up with a single, definitive answer (people have been trying for centuries)... I think this is because it's such good poetry. Good poetry is as taciturn about its full significance as is reality.
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immortaldiamond
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Re: How to Read Poetry
« Reply #22 on Dec 1, 2009, 12:05am »
To a certain extent I do agree with you, Bedefan. As Chesterton says, "The aim of good prose words is to mean what they say. The aim of good poetical words is to mean what they do not say." If the meaning of a poem is entirely straightforward, it looses much of its power as poetry, and can become equivalent to prose.

I love to be able to get something new out of a poem every time I read it. But not something entirely different. A good poem covers many points and shades of meaning in very few words, so of course there will be "different" translations of it. But in the end, (theoretically, at least) these can all be put together, and form ONE definitive analysis of the poem.

But to me, though I may be wrong, "The Red Wheelbarrow" seems to create multiple, relatively unrelated descriptions of the poem. In a way, it is an all-purpose poem, because you can read nearly anything into it. I believe this greatly subtracts from its poetical quality.

When I read a poem, I search for the meaning intended by the poet. When I read "The Red Wheelbarrow", I'm entirely at a loss as to what the poet intended to say in this poem. This is very different from finding new meanings, or even being confused by the meaning. When I am confused, I see something I "should" be understanding--but in this poem I honestly see nothing except a rather strange sentence. Still, I can imagine it as being the beginning to an amazing poem, as an introduction. But left as it is, it doesn't work for me.

I understand that people read poetry for different reasons, and thus different styles of poetry appeal to different people. This is, as I have said several times, only my opinion, and I am eager to hear what others have to say, especially those with a different opinion than mine.
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