• Welcome to the new Internet Infidels Discussion Board, formerly Talk Freethought.

A Rundown of Structured Poetry

'It survives, a way of happening, a mouth' .. that's a good line. If I'm reading him right, I agree.

You were silly like us; your gift survived it all:
The parish of rich women, physical decay,
Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,
For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.
Click to expand...
 
rousseau said:
'It survives, a way of happening, a mouth' .. that's a good line. If I'm reading him right, I agree.

You were silly like us; your gift survived it all:
The parish of rich women, physical decay,
Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,
For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

What I like is the line that precedes the quote:

Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,
For poetry makes nothing happen...

The juxtaposition of madness and weather! Weather is an objective thing, it exists beyond mankind's observations of it and our attempts to control it; madness is subjective, it exists but is almost beyond definition, even beyond understanding.

Poetry cannot make anything happen because Determinism is true. We are in a determined universe, a determined reality.

Just something to chew on...
 
Mary Karr's essay finally arrived in the mail today. I'm not completely through it but so far it's exactly in line with my perspective on some of the poetry I've read. Evoking emotion and clarity, without these two things poetry comes across as convoluted and dry.

This is my hangup with the genre too. Too much attention paid to dazzling with literary style, and not enough to the substance beneath the decor. It's nice to know that I'm not entirely alone in this, and that others have shared the view as well.

I'd actually lent my mom some of Cohen's earlier work a few months ago, and had her read a couple of George Seferis' poems. She's by no means an expert in poetry or literature and her first thought about most of it was that she 'had no idea what they were talking about'. It's seems like the writing world can be somewhat self congratulatory, while at the same time completely disconnected from every-day readers.
 
I'm glad you liked the Mary Karr essay, rousseau. I thought you would appreciate it. Have you read the poetry in the book yet? Some of it is quite good.
 
I haven't yet, no, but plan to. Our son hasn't provided much time or energy for reading recently, so I jumped straight to the essay. I did go through a few poems on your blog and a bit of Irving Layton recently, but that's about it. There is a lot of poetry sitting unread in my collection.
 
I did make one that can be found here. I let it die because no one is interested in my ranting and ravings.. but I'd welcome updates and general discussion in it. It's been nice chatting with you about the topic.
 
rousseau said:
I did make one that can be found here. I let it die because no one is interested in my ranting and ravings.. but I'd welcome updates and general discussion in it. It's been nice chatting with you about the topic.
Click to expand...

I should have just looked for it I suppose. I see I didn't get too involved in that thread, so I assume I must have been in a bad frame of mind.

Well, I shall resurrect the thread shortly, with another Auden quote I've been wanting to share...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom