Pound vs. Eliot

[jdeirmend]

Billy,

It would be fun to take this discussion further, but I don't think you're really putting much effort at all into seeing what I'm trying to say.

For one, I'm terribly confused as to the sense of the word "know" that you are using. No human being can know another but through the medium of the manifest signs, actions, behaviors, etc. that another person makes, and even then, we are confined to interpretation. With that having been said, why should we prima facie exclude the things a person writes, as art, from the court of evidence that a person was this sort of person or that sort of person?

For two, I think you are imputing to my view a much simpler and stupider position that what I'm putting forward. I'm not asking you to psychoanalyze anyone on the basis of their poetry. What I'm saying is more like, after carefully reading a number of an author's works, you will unavoidably get a sense of who they are as a person -- even if its as minimal as that said author was very private about his/her person, and didn't permit any discernible biographical information slip into his or her writing (i.e. shakespeare).

For three, you keep asserting that the poem isn't very good, but you offer no reasons whatsoever to back the assertion up. If you want to argue against one of the most widely known and appreciated Sestinas ever written -- and yes, it is still taught and read widely today, in English departments all over the world -- you'd be better served by saying why you think it's not very good.

Lastly, on the notion that a poem need to be appealing to "everyone" to be the best poem. There is a very deep paradox here that you're not appreciating, and that's simply that everyone is no one. This is as much to say: the more universally appealing any piece of art is, the more likely it is to be, artistically speaking, a piece of shit. Take country music, for crying out loud. There are more people who appreciate this "form of art" than those who appreciate poetry on this planet, and this probably by a ratio of 100:1. Now, here's a lyric from a billboard top 100 country song, "Drink in My Hand:"

Fill it up or throw it down
I got a forty hour week worth of trouble to drown
No need to complicate it, I'm a simple man
All you got to do is put a drink in my hand

There are a hell of a lot more people in the world who can relate to this and appreciate it than you will ever know or care to know. Does that change the fact that has absolutely zero artistic merit whatsoever?

sorry but i never try and see the person behind the poem, and no, i never recognised pund through the poem you showed jdeirmend. theres three poets i could possibly recognise for an unknown poem of theirs (on my part) poe, kipling and shakespeare, after that i wouldn't have a clue. the sestina wasn't that impressive

Billy,

That is a perfectly respectable stance, and I am sure it is shared by Matron. But it no longer seems to me to be adequate. One may know nothing; it may be anonymous --that's the end of it. But otherwise -- poets, and all sorts of writers and artists, are inclined to refer to other works, or events that they know of, and such --and what or whom more, than themselves? Consciously or not, that is what they do. Were I to write a poem with 'I' as narrator, about a fictional crash at the Malaysian Grand Prix, something of me would squeeze out. More often than not, it is more direct, and you may as well know something of the guy's life, rather than get some sort of concordance. We speak about ourselves, because we are human, and poet and poems are inextricably entangled. Tomorrow, of course, I may have done a complete volte-face.... (all down my trousers)

i'm not saying i don't want to see or know what the poet knows, i just have no need top know plath or sexton topped themselves in order to see pain in their works, while i know what poets what poems wrote ( though not many) and i can sometimes reference a poem as being like one of poe's the raven or emily's (poem of choice here) i have no need of knowing if oscar was gay or imprisoned etc, it doesn't make reading goal any better the reading of. that the poet puts something of themselves is an expected isn't it, just as long it's not his name address and telephone number :J:

---

Ok. Let's think through this. You claim to not recognize Pound through the poem I showed, and that is fine. In this sort of instance, there is some sense, after all, in which you have to know who you're looking for to find him. But to say that you can't recognize a certain sort of artistic disposition at work, on the other hand, would be absurd. Whatever you don't know about Pound, after reading Altaforte, it shouldn't take much to recognize at least a couple of things about him. If anything else, that he was either at least mildly crazy, had a very poignant sense of humor, or (most likely) perhaps a little bit of both.

sorry but no i don't need to know a poet to recognise their style. despite what you or anyone else think you/they don't know pound. you see a style of writing, you read a review of what the work means or comes from but you don't know them. the same as i don't know you, no matter how many poems you write.

Having read more than a couple of Pound's poems, however, Altaforte becomes, for me, that much more meaningful. Even more so after understanding some of the biographical details of Pond's life. There is of course a chance I am in error in the interpretive nuances that my hermeneutic, which can only be put together piecemeal, tend me towards. But there is also the chance in which the meaning I'm intuiting/imputing, along with its causes/sources, is sensible and well-founded.

it may become meaningful to you. that does not mean you know pound. and again we don't understand any poets life apart from generalisations which cover most people and most profession.
here's a list of suicide numbers. (i'm guessing they went some kind of mental upheaval)
Food batchmakers (241)

Physicians (222) and health aides (excluding nursing) (221)

Lathe and turning machine operators (199)

Biological, life and medical scientists (188)

Social scientists and urban planners (171)

Dentists (165)

Lawyers and Judges (140)

Guards/sales occupations were tied at 139

Tool and die makers (126)

Police, public servants (118)

note that there are no professional poets

That's also fine, but consider that this has as much to do with how much you've read any of those poets, as well as how much poetry and literature you've read in general. Certain meanings will always be unavailable to the uninitiated, and likewise, certain and questionable meanings will be unavailable to the initiated. Also note the logic of what you're saying. Just because you reckon its only possible for you to recognize an unknown poem from three poets you do know, does not at all entail that you cannot recognize something, however fleeting, tentative and incomplete, about any poet from reading a single poem he or she wrote - if only that the poet in question wrote the poem in question. Still, to come back to that first poem, after reading the poet in question's corpus, can either corroborate, dismantle, or augment one's initial impressions.

first off, you have no idea what a person on here has or hasn't read, at one stage in my life i was reading up to 4 books a day. when i say the poets i'm not on about the poet but their style of writing. i take the poem as the poem, i don't after reading sit back and think...that guy was molested as a child, or that guy's a drunk. why sould I?

Further, I would invite you to consider that none of us on this message board are that good of readers, after all, relatively speaking. It takes a master like Bloom, for instance, to detect the contours of a reaction against predecessor poets, for instance, within the work of a given poet

another misconception, how can you say such a thing without knowing everyone here? I know of more than a couple who i would deem "good readers"

Whether or not the poem is impressive to you has as much to do, perhaps, with your general impression of me as anything. Even so, I can't help but remember a a wild night I've had, wherein I recited it in a half-drunken stupor, full of self-conscious and manly posturing to my friends. That one of them was full of himself and his own macho-ness to take it seriously and compliment me for the "new leaf I was turning" was enough to fill me with all kinds of joyous laughter, as much as I enjoyed acting the part of Bertrans. Anyone who takes this poem seriously would probably have to be psychotic, but when taken lightly and ironically, it exudes a comedy, for me, that is as beautiful as it is redemptive. [/b]

yes, i'm sure it it, but alas i'm not you. and i'm not him, i'm me and it's not that good a poem as far as i see it. you can't quantify feeling or what it is a reader sees. a good poem is a good poem irrespective of the poets sufferings or lack thereof. are we saying poems mean nothing if we don't see the poet in them. what about the lying poets i know i lie with my poetry. isn't the best poem the poem that everyone has an affinity with. ?