Poetry Vs Prose

[popeye]

Prose: a soccer game shown in its entirety. Poetry: the same game shown only in scoring or near-scoring episodes.

Vera Pavlova

[heslopian]

I don't think prose and poetry cover the same game, so comparing the coverage seems a bit pointless to me.

[rayheinrich]

"Portraying poetry and prose as opposites is illogical (as well as trite).
They are not mutually exclusive, they are not entities; they are but two
of the many attributes of writing." - Tom Stoppard


People, especially popular poets, who use simplistic sports metaphors
deserve being made to listen to the eternal pointless (0-0) soccer game poem
recited by that excretable Australian poet whose name (thankfully) escapes me
though I'm sure Leanne, poor soul, has it burned into hers.

P.P.S. Vera Pavlova poem:

I think it will be winter when he comes.
From the unbearable whiteness of the road
a dot will emerge, so black that eyes will blur,
and it will be approaching for a long, long time,
making his absence commensurate with his coming,
and for a long, long time it will remain a dot.
A speck of dust? A burning in the eye? And snow,
there will be nothing else but snow,
and for a long, long while there will be nothing,
and he will pull away the snowy curtain,
he will acquire size and three dimensions,
he will keep coming closer, closer . . .
This is the limit, he cannot get closer. But he keeps approaching,
now too vast to measure . . .

From:
http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/poetry/...z1rXh7dT9j

[Bronte]

It would add so much interest is the first line came to life, first by cutting the self right out of the picture
like this

It will be winter when he comes from the unbearable
emerge so black that eyes will blur, whiteness,
of the road a dot will be approaching for a long, long time,
making his absence commensurate with his coming,
and for a long, long time remain a dot. A burning

I can’t deal with the rest! it is rubbish

I like to look for the good

[rayheinrich]

Yes, I'd start with "It will be..." as well, but unlike you, I really quite
like the poem. I had to read through quite a few of Pavlova's to reach
one I liked as she seems a bit 'pop' for me. But it could just as well be
the translator, Steven Seymour's glibness I'm feeling. This one though,
works for me. Mostly it's the details in the landscape and the coy parody
of existential suspense. "I find poems without humor", as Theodore Dreslin
famously remarked, "to be quite humorless".

[Leanne]

I don't think prose and poetry cover the same game, so comparing the coverage seems a bit pointless to me.

Jack, sorry to say, I couldn't disagree with you more on that... though I think Pavlova has the comparison arse-about. The highlights package to me is more like the novel -- sure, it's shorter and I can see how she's made the simplistic assumption that short means less information, but prose is a whole bunch of high points linked together by lots and lots of commentary and explanation, with the pundits making lines all over the screen. A poem is more like the full game, because it has lots of opportunity to wander off and make a cup of tea, come back, examine the way the teams are moving at your leisure until that wonderful excitement of the goal or brilliant save. Even a 0-0 draw lets you take something away.

Poems and prose are absolutely the same game, they're just presented in different ways. You will get the same information from a poem as a novel, but a poem gives you more time for independent thought.

[abu nuwas]

Wrong game. Novel is fast moving, action-packed Twenty 20, and five day Test the poetry of what might happen, what is not happening, and opportunity to meander off and get a warm beer (admittedly, with a high chance of the only wicket of the day falling the second your back is turned). Will the batsman break the bowling, and cut loose? Will the weather hold? How about the new ball? Will the ball begin to reverse spin? How 'green' is the pitch? Are cracks starting to appear? Would it be worth declaring? When?

Cricket, btw -- and England still rather miraculously top of the tree!

[Leanne]

The tree's got termites though :p -- and that's a pretty apt analogy.

[abu nuwas]

The tree's got termites though :p -- and that's a pretty apt analogy.

If the effect of the termites is to get KP going, bring them on.