The most recent (as of Jan. 25, 2007) issue of The New Yorker, kindly subscribed to by people on my mail route so that i can read them lol, has an article on the resurgent popularity of one of my favorite poets, Longfellow.
After Tennyson, I find Longfellow's poetry to have the most beautiful cadence and rythm of any I have read.
The article says that Longfellow was a storyteller (as was Tennyson!) and that modern poems, "to be considered any good, must be concise, compressed and hard to understand."
PET PEEVE ALERT!
I believe in my deepest heart that poetry should be able to be understood, at least on its face, by anyone of average intelligence. To me, if it can't be, then the writer has not done their job. And I don't mean dumbing down. That's the trick....to say simply and elegantly something that is complicated or hard to express.
I think that part of the reason so many people think poetry is irrelevant or boring is that so much of what is published today IS dense obscure mental masturbation.
Poetry should be art, it should reach across our isolation so that we can say, yes, i have felt that way too. Impenetrable intellectualized written rubik's cubes don't do that...they say, look how much smarter I am than all of you. Blah.
From a readers point of view I agree. Poetry, at least on the surface, should be easy to follow and understand. A person should be able to read a poem and say “I get it”. The poem may or may not have the same meaning to the reader as it did to the writer as far as the deeper meaning of a poem (remember people can read things into a poem whether they were written into it or not) but from the readers perspective they should be able to understand the meaning of the poem on its surface.
From a writers point of view…I still agree with you. One of the things I love about poetry is that you have the ability to place deeper and deeper meanings within a poem that is hidden beneath the surface while still having the "superficial" easy to read and understand poem laying across the top. To me that is one of the great beauties of poetry and the vast array of styles and forms that have developed throughout history. With all of the tools of poetry at a writers disposal there should be no reason a good understandable poem could not be written.
I like your perspective.
Eiregirl _________________ All poems and stories posted by Eiregirl are
Copyright 2005 - 2008 Aoibhegréine
These literary works are my property under copyright. If you wish to use my work for any purpose please ASK FIRST.
Fri Jan 26, 2007 4:50 am
smart_cookie
Joined: 12 Aug 2006
Posts: 2310
Location: USA
Thanks Eire! Sadly though, you will never make a modern poet. What you wrote was far too clear! LOL!
--Cookie
Fri Jan 26, 2007 1:21 pm
desert-fish
Joined: 13 Apr 2006
Posts: 2777
Location: deleted
"dense obscure mental masturbation."
i agree with you totally...but why does this sound vaguely appealing
Tue Mar 06, 2007 8:04 pm
BdeCaunteton
Joined: 07 Jan 2007
Posts: 955
Location: Iowa City, IA
... _________________ “It would be a pity of lesbians and gay men retreated into the same kind of cultural separatism. " - Jeanette Winterson
www[dot]bdecauntetonspoetry[dot]webs[dot]com
Last edited by BdeCaunteton on Sat Sep 26, 2020 9:40 am; edited 1 time in total
quote:Originally posted by BdeCaunteton:
I'm with all of you ladies. My Poetry class is warping my mind into modernism. Why juxtaposition? What does it do for the reader? It just confuses further. Let's start a literary movement Eire!!!
Starts signing people up for the No Mental Masturbation movement
X___________
Sign up girls and lets get this show on the road
Eiregirl _________________ All poems and stories posted by Eiregirl are
Copyright 2005 - 2008 Aoibhegréine
These literary works are my property under copyright. If you wish to use my work for any purpose please ASK FIRST.
Wed Mar 14, 2007 9:18 pm
Sunny
Joined: 18 Jun 2006
Posts: 1571
Location: Massachusetts
quote:Originally posted by Eiregirl:
quote:Originally posted by BdeCaunteton:
I'm with all of you ladies. My Poetry class is warping my mind into modernism. Why juxtaposition? What does it do for the reader? It just confuses further. Let's start a literary movement Eire!!!
Starts signing people up for the No Mental Masturbation movement
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