Measuring Poetry

[ICSoria]

Came across this clip from Dead Poets Society and it really inspired me: to puke.

This is, in my opinion, a load of crap. If we can't measure poetry then where does quality control come in? The graph isn't demeaning literature. On the contrary, it helps give the serious reader a refined understanding of it. Does the Williams character think that Shakespeare and Byron just went with the flow and drummed out whatever popped into their heads? No. They worked at their craft. Creation requires effort. Beauty doesn't just pour out of your arse.

I would like to offer my own opinions on this and hope they are sufficiently cohesive with the rest of the discussion. I have put it together rather hastily as I am preparing to drive to Arizona today. I will be on the road and not come back online until later tonight or tomorrow morning (Pacific Time). Please feel free to point out where I am wrong in anything I write. You will soon realize I have very thick skin. I also have a great respect for anyone who can explain certain facts more clearly to me.
I am really glad you posted that clip, Jack. I also watched that movie…once, and knew something was lacking. You summed it up well in my opinion. Someone once attempted to excoriate me on a thread in which I offered what was in their opinion, a harsh critique on a poem. I was accused of being, among other things, “overbearing” and told: “You do not get to decide what helps people learn”. OK, he had a right to say it since he owned the site. Even so, I respectfully submitted that he was peddling horse fluff in that statement. In my opinion, art and poetry may not be quantifiable according to some pedantic mathematical theory, but most can be judged as good, bad, working, or failing by professional or amateur critics. One need not go to school to learn about critiquing. However, reading up on various forms and poetic tools such as effective metaphor, simile, rhyme, and meter helps prepare poets with better understanding of their craft. Such knowledge allows them to distinguish lines that seem a bit too forced, if not contorted, as to render them ineffective. Yes, it also helps to read the great works of other poets--mainly dead ones, although I am inclined to believe that some of them are over-rated--having become venerated simply because they finally became dead.
Critiquing is all about making decisions; determining what makes a poem work and what makes it fail and it usually takes no special qualifications to recognize a bad poem when the points that fail are glaringly obvious. In critiquing most poems on any forum, even newbies are capable of offering more than a gratuitous, “Wow, that’s great, dude! or This touched me deep down!”, if they make a half-hearted attempt. It can involve a simple correction of typos or syntax, or at least attempting to explain what line worked for them and what didn’t, without fear of someone saying they’re wrong. It is after all subjective reasoning and anyone’s opinion can be held to scrutiny.
Shakespeare definitely did not “go with the flow.” He certainly created many of the parameters and established the paradigm. Many believe that poetry springs from the heart, or somewhere else deep down inside. I say it may well begin there but to turn it into good poetry, it must be crafted. The fact is: Certain prosodic parameters still exist, even in free-form. These parameters govern whether, and how long any poet's creative attempts will be remembered. In the end, writers who ignore these parameters subject their works to suffering the same fate so many previous, hastily forged, online pieces have suffered: an extremely limited shelf life.

Sid