Description vs Presentation

[tomoffing]

I've read several references to the distinction between presentation and description, where presentation is considered one of the key defining characteristics of poetry as opposed to prose.

I can grasp explanations that provide examples, such as Ezra Pounds references to Shakespeare's "dawn in russet mantle clad" as pure presentation.

However, I don't fully understand the concept.

I was hoping someone could point me to further reading, or perhaps give me some pointers.
I'll be deeply electronically grateful.

[billy]

i'm not sure i'm getting you correctly, are you asking what the difference is between poetry and prose via presentation.

an easy answer is; a poem reads like a poem and prose reads like prose. then they have sex and no one knows which is which. i think it's one of the unexplainable phenomenons that everyone has a different answer to. this may sound off the wall but i'd read LOTR.

[tomoffing]

i'm not sure i'm getting you correctly, are you asking what the difference is between poetry and prose via presentation.

an easy answer is; a poem reads like a poem and prose reads like prose. then they have sex and no one knows which is which. i think it's one of the unexplainable phenomenons that everyone has a different answer to. this may sound off the wall but i'd read LOTR.

Hey billy,
I'm not asking that unanswerable question!

Apologies, being clearer,

I trying to better understand the idea of presentation.

I've read that poetry should always seek to present scenes and ideas in such a way that engages the reader to create or imagine them for themselves.
Whereas description invokes a more passive absorption of the subject.

The quote that clicked the question is from an essay by ezra pound on the "don'ts of poetry".

"When Shakespeare talks of the ‘Dawn in russet mantle clad’ he presents something which the painter does not present. There is in this line of his nothing that one can call description; he presents"

Ezra Pound's "don'ts in poetry"

I remember reading something previously (I cant for the life of me remember where) that emphasized the need to present as opposed to describe.

Who knows, I could just be confusing myself.

[Leanne]

Do you mean "show, not tell"?

Terminology among academics varies so much it's hard to know who means what by what, unless there are specific examples given.

[billy]

sounds like that's what he means leanne, though i'm not sure i that well equipped to give any in depth answer. narrative poetry can have show...images and still be narrative. the tell part is when you give a poem that holds nothing outside of intangibles. the show part is where you pick a specific image to explain what you want to show.

[ellajam]

I have problems understanding describe vs present too. For me it seems a blurry line. When something is described yet creates something more in the reader's mind, is it then considered presented?

Is presenting just describing in a multilayered, provocative way? I'm not there yet.

Good question.

[milo]

I've read several references to the distinction between presentation and description, where presentation is considered one of the key defining characteristics of poetry as opposed to prose.

I can grasp explanations that provide examples, such as Ezra Pounds references to Shakespeare's "dawn in russet mantle clad" as pure presentation.

However, I don't fully understand the concept.

I was hoping someone could point me to further reading, or perhaps give me some pointers.
I'll be deeply electronically grateful.

I have addressed this a few times on this site somewhere, usually I say something like there is no place in poetry for description, but it amounts to the same thing. At it's most basic, description uses modification for the sole purpose of, well, describing something to the reader.

"The bird had brown feathers.It was cold and damp from the rain as it flew away to find its home"

These lines describe what is going on. They are prose. Poetry presents things with their essential attribute.

"The brown-feathered bird flew through the cold rain towards home."

This is poetry. Nothing is described. Essential attributes which should point toward the central metaphor are provided.

Now granted, I just made this example up on the spot and I could probably do a few better if pushed but the basic idea is there. Let me know if you need any more.

---

here is one spot where this came up:

http://www.pigpenpoetry.com/showthread.p...t=describe

[abu nuwas]

I have not checked in a real book, but the Internet provides a slightly different quotation, from Hamlet, than that mentioned above, and repeated in the reference to Pound in the link.


165




170

''HORATIO
So have I heard and do in part believe it.

But look, the morn, in russet mantle clad,

Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastward hill.''


As interesting and radical as was the meeting between three young men in a café off the Tottenham Court Rd, in 1909, joined a week or so later by the domineering Pound, the words chosen 'present' and 'describe' do not strike me as very apt. Nor, for that matter does the point seem worth labouring. But then I don't care for Pound; perhaps the light-bulb will come on before I pay in my checks.

[rayheinrich]

Good writing can 'tell', bad writing can 'show'. 'Telling'
isn't inherently better or worse than 'showing'. Besides;
no sentence, paragraph, etc. is ever all one or the other.

The 'show' metaphor is a weak one. Writing tells, images
show. A metaphor for a sunset isn't a description of a sunset,
isn't a painting of a sunset, isn't a photograph of a sunset,
isn't a sunset. If done well, they're beautiful; if done badly,
they're wretched (the gods, by the way, routinely flub sunsets).

"Show, don't tell" is such a massive cliché that people
are constantly floundering about for a catchy substitute.

In addition to "present, don't describe"; I've seen
"hint, don't hammer" and "allude, don't conclude".

I've never seen "nurse don't coerce", "induce don't deduce",
or "eschew the rhetorical, wax metaphorical"; but I suppose
that's only a matter of time.

People who make up or purvey these slogans (excepting myself)
should be cudgelled with a bludgeon; or bludgeoned with a cudgel;
or, preferably, both.


P.S. I SO love "eschew the rhetorical, wax metaphorical*"
that I hereby make it an exception.


*And yes, I'm aware it should be 'metaphorically'; but then
it wouldn't roll trippingly off the tongue. I've decided that
the grammatical error is an intended subtextual comment on
the lack of proper English often displayed by the sloganeers
who employ "show, don't tell" and other such statements.

[Leanne]

In order to more thoroughly eschew the rhetorical (), you'll find Hayakawa's Ladder of Abstraction very useful. Essentially, the most successful writers tend to draw heavily from the lower levels:-

Level 4: ABSTRACTIONS
Eg. beauty, love, life, time, success, power, happiness, faith, hope, charity, evil, good

Level 3: NOUN CLASSES -- BROAD GROUP NAMES WITH LITTLE SPECIFICATION
Eg. people, men, women, young people, everybody, nobody, industry, we, goals, things, television

Level 2: NOUN CATEGORIES -- MORE DEFINITE GROUPS
Eg. teenagers, middle class, clothing industry, parents, college campus, newborn child, TV comedies, house plants

Level 1: SPECIFIC, IDENTIFIABLE NOUNS
Eg. My blue Levi 501s, Skittles commercials, mum's philodendron, my new baby sister Frogbottom

[rayheinrich]

In order to more thoroughly eschew the rhetorical (), you'll find Hayakawa's Ladder of Abstraction very useful. Essentially, the most successful writers tend to draw heavily from the lower levels:-

Level 4: ABSTRACTIONS
Eg. beauty, love, life, time, success, power, happiness, faith, hope, charity, evil, good

Level 3: NOUN CLASSES -- BROAD GROUP NAMES WITH LITTLE SPECIFICATION
Eg. people, men, women, young people, everybody, nobody, industry, we, goals, things, television

Level 2: NOUN CATEGORIES -- MORE DEFINITE GROUPS
Eg. teenagers, middle class, clothing industry, parents, college campus, newborn child, TV comedies, house plants

Level 1: SPECIFIC, IDENTIFIABLE NOUNS
Eg. My blue Levi 501s, Skittles commercials, mum's philodendron, my new baby sister Frogbottom

I tend to draw heavily from the higher levels.
(I'm easily abstracted.)

[Truerenigma]

In order to more thoroughly eschew the rhetorical (), you'll find Hayakawa's Ladder of Abstraction very useful. Essentially, the most successful writers tend to draw heavily from the lower levels:-

Level 4: ABSTRACTIONS
Eg. beauty, love, life, time, success, power, happiness, faith, hope, charity, evil, good

Level 3: NOUN CLASSES -- BROAD GROUP NAMES WITH LITTLE SPECIFICATION
Eg. people, men, women, young people, everybody, nobody, industry, we, goals, things, television

Level 2: NOUN CATEGORIES -- MORE DEFINITE GROUPS
Eg. teenagers, middle class, clothing industry, parents, college campus, newborn child, TV comedies, house plants

Level 1: SPECIFIC, IDENTIFIABLE NOUNS
Eg. My blue Levi 501s, Skittles commercials, mum's philodendron, my new baby sister Frogbottom

Purchased. Thank you.

[rowens]

And refusing to use certain words because of a level ranking on a chart won't do either. Not unless you're the clever one making the chart. And even then you're using them.

[rayheinrich]

And refusing to use certain words because of a level ranking on a chart won't do either. Not unless you're the clever one making the chart. And even then you're using them.

                        Evil People's Proletarian Philodendrons

The third sort of ironic principle is at work here. Maybe the gods are
telegraphing dancing instructions via cryptographically hierarchical
target-rich nonphysically extant psychic phenomena whose metaphrastic
machinations present themselves as seemingly innocuous lists of
linguistically fragmented semiotically dense sub-sonic perceptiles.


Make mine house plants.