04-11-2014, 08:37 AM
Oh good, milo's done all the heavy lifting, so I can just blather on as I usually do.
"a formal, academic, structured, “good” poem."
You can have a formal, structured, poem, that is not good. (I don't see what academics has to do with it.) I have written poems that were technically correct and still stunk. Scansion is hardly academically derived, but if you have no way to check what you have, how do you know what it is you have. Yes, certain forms follow certain patterns. Do not be frustrated with yourself, it takes people years to learn this, poetry is not an easy thing (Just wait tell milo tells you about beat or pulse, you'll really scream).
On academics: Academicians are very good at creating rules about something they know little about. (C .S. Lewis excepted.) Fortunately, academia has a self-correcting mechanism not unlike Wikipedia. Unfortunately, the self-correcting mechanism in academia works much more slowly and is powered by egoism. I had just started at a University. A nun, who also was a teacher there came charging up to me and said, "Well have they taught you that all cultures are equally valid. I wanted to ask her if this applied to the Jaweed culture in Darfur that condoned raping girls under the age of 12 by thirty something years old men? For once I did the "right" thing and remained silent.
chin up,
Dale
"a formal, academic, structured, “good” poem."
You can have a formal, structured, poem, that is not good. (I don't see what academics has to do with it.) I have written poems that were technically correct and still stunk. Scansion is hardly academically derived, but if you have no way to check what you have, how do you know what it is you have. Yes, certain forms follow certain patterns. Do not be frustrated with yourself, it takes people years to learn this, poetry is not an easy thing (Just wait tell milo tells you about beat or pulse, you'll really scream).
On academics: Academicians are very good at creating rules about something they know little about. (C .S. Lewis excepted.) Fortunately, academia has a self-correcting mechanism not unlike Wikipedia. Unfortunately, the self-correcting mechanism in academia works much more slowly and is powered by egoism. I had just started at a University. A nun, who also was a teacher there came charging up to me and said, "Well have they taught you that all cultures are equally valid. I wanted to ask her if this applied to the Jaweed culture in Darfur that condoned raping girls under the age of 12 by thirty something years old men? For once I did the "right" thing and remained silent.
chin up,
Dale
How long after picking up the brush, the first masterpiece?
The goal is not to obfuscate that which is clear, but make clear that which isn't.
The goal is not to obfuscate that which is clear, but make clear that which isn't.