[split] The Nothing

[ajcohen613]

If you have no "goal" or set sentiment, are not trying to communicate anything, and deny any meaning is inherent in the poem what reason do you give for the reader to read you poem?

Well, I'm not saying the poem is totally obscure and pointless.. at least I hope it doesn't seem that way. I like feeling free to write whatever it is I'd like to...sometimes writing with a set meaning in mind stands as a limitation in regards to what I can write. My first and only poetry professor told me once to "let the words guide your thinking", which I understood as allowing language to guide my thoughts when I was stuck rather than the other way around...kind of like writing oneself out of a thinking-block versus thinking oneself out of a writing-block; I find the former much more rewarding and effective. Yea I admit it, in writing poetry I do tend to self-indulge; it is more about what feels good/right for me as a writer than how my reader interprets the work. Like I said, my goal for most poems in regards to an outsider reading is to rile the desire to participate in another read. There is meaning in the poem, my friend, but in the words of Pessoa (also in my signature) , "most of the meaning we glean is our own" and what the poem means to me personally can never mean what it means for you, the subjective, detached, yet utterly involved reader. I appreciate this exchange we're having; I consider myself too loose and overly embracive in face of vagueness/obscurity, while I get the impression that you're a poet who is more inclined to write to a tee, to outline, to plan and ponder, which is great. Hope I'm not coming off as pretentious or poetically selfish!

[Erthona]

"I get the impression that you're a poet who is more inclined to write to a tee, to outline, to plan and ponder, which is great."

No actually, I often feel the poem is writing me, to use your terms. I have often been awakened in the middle of night, and there is a completed poem in my mind. All I have to do is write it down. If I do not engage my conscious mind the poem just falls out onto the piece of paper, so to speak. I will later go back and edit for clarity, grammar, punctuation and so forth. If there are things within the poem that can be said more  straightforwardly I do so. If there are things within the poem that are difficult to express, I look for the clearest way to express it. My idea of a poet, is a person who brings complex, or new, ideas and perceptions into the world, as these are already difficult enough to comprehend I do not see the point of adding unnecessary ambiguity to the writing. If what is happening within the poem is a man sitting at a coffee table smoking, then say that. If he leaves, say that. Don't make simple action complex. The same with description. Do not take a straightforward description and make it complicated. To do so is pure sophistry. I would say, "in my opinion", but that is simply not accurate. I have been writing and reading poetry for well over 40 years. At various times of those 40+ years, I have read and studied poetic criticism; not the ludicrous theories written by most academics, but insightful criticism by top level poets such as Coleridge, in his "Biographia Literaria". I have also been the editor of a poetry magazine, albeit a University one. The point being, I am not just some duff of the streets who thinks doggerels in the bathroom stalls are the highest form of poetry. I don't say this to toot my own horn, but to show that there is some weight behind what I am saying; this is not just purely my opinion.
I don't understand (actually I do as I have done the same when I was younger), why someone would think it is a good idea to leave necessary parts of the sequence of events out, whose only function is to make the reading more difficult on the reader. You might notice stream of "Stream of Consciousness" never really caught on, although there are the brave few who still attempt it. My suggestion as to why this is, is it requires to much from its readers. A person doesn't mind to work with a poem for the deeper meaning, or insight, but seldom are they willing to do so just to find out the sequence of events or other things that should be fairly obvious (I am thinking of your other poem "Andrew's Square", or something to that effect. On your poem above, there is little in terms of concept that is difficult, it is that the poem has been written in a difficult manner. Even Jack who gave you a more or less positive review (and I concur with him that you have some good individual lines) said that he had no idea what the poem was about. I would like to save you the 10 to 15 years I wasted writing this sort of thing, because I think you have some talent. I do not know why you choose to purposely obscure/ make things unnecessarily ambiguous, but I can tell you why I did... but I think I will not do so in an open forum. Should you care to know, you can PM me, or you are perfectly within your rights to disregard me as an old lunatic who has lost his mind as many people do. If I had remembered you were the one who wrote "Andrew's Square" I would not have bothered beating a dead horse, I will try to refrain in the future. The problem is you avatar. Anything dealing with Space Ghost, or any Hanna-Barbara cartoon really, just draws me in just like a nit to a hair follicle.

Dale      

[Brownlie]

I'm not sure Coleridge is necessarily the best guide nowadays, but that would be conjecture. I mean wasn't the idea behind the lyrical ballads a little cloudy and recondite once you get to frames and the literary marketplace? That said, I never edited any magazines, and I can tell you studying old poetry is not the same as learning to write it.

[Erthona]

One example Brownlie. I figured most people would have heard of Coleridge, rather than someone like David V. Erdman. I guess you would consider Aristotle not worth the time as he was even further in the past. I'm sure his idea that all tragedy must have some comedy and all comedy must have some tragedy is not something that would benefit anyone. Nor would Coleridge's critiques on Shakespeare since they were only on the plays, which are not poems despite the fact they are generally written in blank verse (not to mention they are a primer in archetypes). No I don't know what anyone could get from the guy who wrote three of the greatest poems in the English language since the form he used then is so out of date today. I find it amazing that people toss away as garbage things they know virtually nothing about, taking only the most short sighted approach to a wealth of treasure. Believe it or not, at one time poets ached for knowledge whether it was germane or not, as they knew one can not prejudge what might and might not be valuable.   Poetry is not about the form one uses, although any poet worth the name should have control over and knowledge of the major forms. If one has no knowledge of formal poetry, i.e. metered rhyming poetry, one really has no idea what he is about when writing free verse, or as it was originally called, free iambic verse. Elliot pointed out that no verse is completely free, that is without constraint. In much of today's poetry people do not learn the older forms and so produce tone deaf poetry, copying only the superficial elements because they are unaware of the other aspects of free verse, as they have never taken the trouble to train their ear. They obviously have no conception of rhythm, cadence, beat or meter, and so like a deaf conductor they wave their stick in random fashion because they can not hear the music. It is impossible to explain this to them, as they have no conception of what it is they are missing(not to mention they consider it completely unimportant), of course this goes far beyond just the rhythmic quality of poetry.

Dale    

[milo]

One example Brownlie. I figured most people would have heard of Coleridge, rather than someone like David V. Erdman. I guess you would consider Aristotle not worth the time as he was even further in the past. I'm sure his idea that all tragedy must have some comedy and all comedy must have some tragedy is not something that would benefit anyone. Nor would Coleridge's critiques on Shakespeare since they were only on the plays, which are not poems despite the fact they are generally written in blank verse (not to mention they are a primer in archetypes). No I don't know what anyone could get from the guy who wrote three of the greatest poems in the English language since the form he used then is so out of date today. I find it amazing that people toss away as garbage things they know virtually nothing about, taking only the most short sighted approach to a wealth of treasure. Believe it or not, at one time poets ached for knowledge whether it was germane or not, as they knew one can not prejudge what might and might not be valuable.   Poetry is not about the form one uses, although any poet worth the name should have control over and knowledge of the major forms. If one has no knowledge of formal poetry, i.e. metered rhyming poetry, one really has no idea what he is about when writing free verse, or as it was originally called, free iambic verse. Elliot pointed out that no verse is completely free, that is without constraint. In much of today's poetry people do not learn the older forms and so produce tone deaf poetry, copying only the superficial elements because they are unaware of the other aspects of free verse, as they have never taken the trouble to train their ear. They obviously have no conception of rhythm, cadence, beat or meter, and so like a deaf conductor they wave their stick in random fashion because they can not hear the music. It is impossible to explain this to them, as they have no conception of what it is they are missing(not to mention they consider it completely unimportant), of course this goes far beyond just the rhythmic quality of poetry.

Dale    

I would love to argue with dale about some of this.
Alas, I cannot.

[Brownlie]

One example Brownlie. I figured most people would have heard of Coleridge, rather than someone like David V. Erdman. I guess you would consider Aristotle not worth the time as he was even further in the past. I'm sure his idea that all tragedy must have some comedy and all comedy must have some tragedy is not something that would benefit anyone. Nor would Coleridge's critiques on Shakespeare since they were only on the plays, which are not poems despite the fact they are generally written in blank verse (not to mention they are a primer in archetypes). No I don't know what anyone could get from the guy who wrote three of the greatest poems in the English language since the form he used then is so out of date today. I find it amazing that people toss away as garbage things they know virtually nothing about, taking only the most short sighted approach to a wealth of treasure. Believe it or not, at one time poets ached for knowledge whether it was germane or not, as they knew one can not prejudge what might and might not be valuable.   Poetry is not about the form one uses, although any poet worth the name should have control over and knowledge of the major forms. If one has no knowledge of formal poetry, i.e. metered rhyming poetry, one really has no idea what he is about when writing free verse, or as it was originally called, free iambic verse. Elliot pointed out that no verse is completely free, that is without constraint. In much of today's poetry people do not learn the older forms and so produce tone deaf poetry, copying only the superficial elements because they are unaware of the other aspects of free verse, as they have never taken the trouble to train their ear. They obviously have no conception of rhythm, cadence, beat or meter, and so like a deaf conductor they wave their stick in random fashion because they can not hear the music. It is impossible to explain this to them, as they have no conception of what it is they are missing(not to mention they consider it completely unimportant), of course this goes far beyond just the rhythmic quality of poetry.

Dale    

Well, I've studied both Aristotle and Coleridge (though not in-depth enough to call myself a scholar in those fields). However, the taxonomies of Aristotle face the problems of representational violence and all sorts of other things. I'm not sure how the whole mimesis thing holds up, but it seems to have been abandoned to a degree in the Romantic Period. I thought Coleridge was good, but not the best ever. Romanticism often faces the problem of going into the supremacy of the subject. I agree on the formal poetry being useful and whatnot. Yet, I think studying poetry goes beyond writing it. For instance, when Romantics are talking about power and life, how does that relate to the origins of race in biology? I mean, simply for its historical value, scholars may benefit from studying Blumenbach's hymn to a Georgian Skull (Apparently he's partly responsible for the whole Caucasian thing we use to designate the origins of white people).  (Also, in regard to Freedom, the paradoxical nature of the phrase seems to have been attempted by Milton and Percy Shelley, though Eliot's take on it is probably somewhat different.) One more thing, because I'm bloated by Yule, writing good criticism is a separate skill set. Coleridge was much more prolific in churning out criticism than Wordsworth, but some would say Wordsworth was a better poet. That should facilitate some discussion, please ignore any typos that may have been present.

[Erthona]

Ah yes a child with a gun.

Since it will not matter what I say, I give you a poem for my rebuttal.


Wordsworth

Youth returns not at the ticking of the clock:
nor Passion its ship again brings to dock.
Unnoticed has Lust gently faded away,
just as did spring, summer has not stayed,
nor shall He return upon another day!
When the blush has faded off the bloom,
and life is now in the evening gloom
of this ancient heart’s approaching doom
in my ears the resounding tock.
I the last, with balding head and graying locks,
find no reprieve or hope of salvation.
---------------------------------------------------------

Ironic, laconic, iconic, despondent,
so weary and dreary and old.
At the turn of a phrase to be forward and bold
and make young girls crave,
this flesh, “I” with one foot in my grave,
they offer nothing to tempt me.

Samuel, Robert, my old friends
we were you know ‘til the end
it’s just the end came to soon,
it was not even noon
when you found your Brigadoon
and left me here alone.

Then new friends I found,
I gathered them ‘round,
but then Percy drown,
Lord George Gordon also went down,
with and to the Greeks.
Then also gone was Keats,
and once again I am the last
and the least.

Was I prophetic, or was it a slip of the tongue,
When I wrote, “only the good die young?”
I linger on, while they are done.
I sit here amongst my gold plated dung,
these medals around my neck are hung.
Lacking in nothing but the slightest lust
my gold shrivels into bullion of rust.
Better to have already been dust
than a Robin without his good fellows.

Thou Good fellow great Robin Puck,
“Flower of the purple dye,” pluck,
then call to your Lord Oberon
and bid him let us be gone.
Let us board the ship to Avalon,
where my friends have already fled.

There, I can rekindle my long dead fire
now I the craft my words to inspire.
As the whirlwind within builds ever higher,
I care not if it is my funeral pyre.
Weave the circle round me thrice
one time alone will suffice.
Then let it truly be said,
he on greatness at last has fed,
before he lay down his head,
and entered into paradise.

–Erthona


©2005-2015

[shemthepenman]

Ah yes a child with a gun.

Since it will not matter what I say, I give you a poem for my rebuttal.


Wordsworth

Youth returns not at the ticking of the clock:
nor Passion its ship again brings to dock.
Unnoticed has Lust gently faded away,
just as did spring, summer has not stayed,
nor shall He return upon another day!
When the blush has faded off the bloom,
and life is now in the evening gloom
of this ancient heart’s approaching doom
in my ears the resounding tock.
I the last, with balding head and graying locks,
find no reprieve or hope of salvation.
---------------------------------------------------------

Ironic, laconic, iconic, despondent,
so weary and dreary and old.
At the turn of a phrase to be forward and bold
and make young girls crave,
this flesh, “I” with one foot in my grave,
they offer nothing to tempt me.

Samuel, Robert, my old friends
we were you know ‘til the end - you mean till, of course
it’s just the end came to soon,
it was not even noon
when you found your Brigadoon
and left me here alone.

Then new friends I found,
I gathered them ‘round,
but then Percy drown,
Lord George Gordon also went down,
with and to the Greeks.
Then also gone was Keats,
and once again I am the last
and the least.

Was I prophetic, or was it a slip of the tongue,
When I wrote, “only the good die young?”
I linger on, while they are done.
I sit here amongst my gold plated dung,
these medals around my neck are hung.
Lacking in nothing but the slightest lust
my gold shrivels into bullion of rust.
Better to have already been dust
than a Robin without his good fellows.

Thou Good fellow great Robin Puck,
“Flower of the purple dye,” pluck,
then call to your Lord Oberon
and bid him let us be gone.
Let us board the ship to Avalon,
where my friends have already fled.

There, I can rekindle my long dead fire
now I the craft my words to inspire.
As the whirlwind within builds ever higher,
I care not if it is my funeral pyre.
Weave the circle round me thrice
one time alone will suffice.
Then let it truly be said,
he on greatness at last has fed,
before he lay down his head,
and entered into paradise.

–Erthona


©2005-2015

[Erthona]

shemthepenman wrote: "you mean till, of course "

No actually I meant the abbreviated form of "until" - 'til. 'til - "aphetic variant of until". I wanted the single syllable as it creates a caesura. Although definition wise there is little difference between until, till, and 'til. For me, I pronounce "'til" much sharper and quicker than either "till" or "until". So for me, it creates a rhythmic quality I like in terms of expressing the last three words of the line.  
But thanks for watching out for me

dale

[shemthepenman]

anyhow, relating to the poem that inspired this discussion (a poem I really liked, by the way), I entirely disagree with the proposition that 'poetry is about making the obscure clear'. Fuck the reader that wants their own warm diarrhea spoon fed to them. Poetry is not a mathematical description or the pedant's ego boost. It is not simple and clear. If what you experience is a man sitting, smoking, then you are not a poet, you are anyone, a journalist, a landscape painter for chocolate boxes. It has nothing to do with obscurity or clarity, this is a nothing dualism; poetry is about sense, which is vague and fuzzy, but at the same time brutal and direct. I don't care to read that 'there was this beggar that used a poor baby as a prop' in more than 12  words! or maybe I do, but a newspaper article would do more. No, what I want, and anyone else looking to poetry to differentiate itself from other writing, is something more.

---

shemthepenman wrote: "you mean till, of course "

No actually I meant the abbreviated form of "until" - 'til. 'til - "aphetic variant of until". I wanted the single syllable as it creates a caesura. Although definition wise there is little difference between until, till, and 'til. For me, I pronounce "'til" much sharper and quicker than either "till" or "until". So for me, it creates a rhythmic quality I like in terms of expressing the last three words of the line.  
But thanks for watching out for me

dale

no, sorry, till is correct. 'til is just plainly wrong.

---

[Erthona]

Sorry, personal preference does not make something wrong, no matter how highly one views himself.

When I speak of clarity, accepting for the moment you will not disregard what I say and just argue for arguments sake, I mean taking something that is already simple and clear and purposefully making it more obscure either by subtracting information that one needs to have a clear understanding of what is trying to be communicated, or adding extra wording that does the same thing. Writing is to communicate. If one is operating under the premiss that one does not need to write as clearly as is possible to communicate whatever it is, the reader does not enter into the relationship aware that the writer will play them false. If one has something of note to say it is often difficult to communicate the idea as it is. It is only when one has nothing of merit to say does he obscure his writing in some way, so that readers will think he is "deeper" or more profound than he actually is. The reader will often think this simply because they can not make sense of what the writer has written. Most readers do not that have the confidence to challenge the writer and generally assume the fault lies with them because they cannot make sense out of the senselessness the writer has put onto the paper. The writer is quite happy to perpetuate the false idea that it is the lack of intelligence in the readers that keeps them from understanding what has been written. It is the "Emperor has no Clothes" for writers. The people who read the poem can't make anything out of it, but are afraid to say anything for fear of looking stupid. So they do their best to comment in a way that makes them look like they are one of the in crowd ( usually something so vague it could mean anything). It is manipulation on the part of the poet pure and simple. The poet, if one ever existed, has now become a charlatan. On the furthest end of baseness the writer is doing this purposely and with full comprehension of what he does. At the other end is a writer unaware he is perpetrating a fraud, and simply following what he has been taught, not fully comprehending what he is doing.
The purpose of any writing, prose, or poetry is to communicate. It makes no sense to sabotage the thing that is at the core of writing. There are those who like to repeat, for whatever reason, that the poet is unimportant, and the only thing that matters is their interpretation of the words. This is the equivalent of what ink blots are to art. If I am creating the poem from the words that have been written, why do I need the writer. I am already creating the myth of my own image to reflect back to me.
Should you feel the need to respond that poetry isn't for communicating, then I ask this. Why make sure you have correct spelling, correct grammar, syntax, punctuation? Those things are there, simply for the purpose of communicating, and doing so clearly. If there is anything that is difficult or obscure for the reader, then it should be because the idea is difficult to express, and no matter how clearly the writer tries to write, it is still a difficult concept to understand, not a simple concept that one has purposefully made obscure. A bit of a ramble, but I am in a bit of a hurry.   

Dale            

[Brownlie]

Well here, is my entry into this (complete with all the problems of an unedited work).

---

What do I know of breathing pastures?
When has the heifer or the blade of grass
Surprised the naked flesh across my neck?
My summons to immortal spirits of the ode
are echoed dead amidst a host of marble shades
I’ve conjured chasing mythic skylarks.
I’ve watched the airy nymphs of natal text
As fireworks that blow like Pleiades
In July fourth barbecues .
And now the very ornate trim which issues from my lips
is begging to a version of a summer wind,
assembled in a human thought machine,
to morph into the furnace of a human mouth.
 
Yet, all of this seems trite when one is gazing on the heifer.
A scene of rusty gears on flesh I’ve never seen
May grind the bidden cow to be devoured by a mechanistic monster,
and, for a moment, I  will ask,
What silent bovine moan is this,
it seems to hum the still sad music of humanity?
 
The question of my status as Poseidon, or as
some vampiric fiend of modern evil  
must be put away for now,
and I hear the absence of a southern drawl
as I wear a hardhat dripping with an ivy tendril.
Set to work, I build my inner mansion which consists
Of Redman’s chaw and rolling tumbleweeds.
Possibly the Ozarks loom amongst the marble shades
And Oh Death never breathed or died.
Perhaps the summer wind is there,
blowing up in some conflagration.

---

Now, I will say this, and I think in the process I will agree with Dale on some of his points. Every deviation from sense or the truth seems to weaken many poems. Linguistics can be played with, but metaphysical conceits based on nothing don't seem to work. To get a concise statement of meaningful "show and not tell" (to use a tired adage) is something that may take work. On the other hand, there is still some stuff I just don't get. For instance, there is this book Chasing Ghosts The Remix by Kevin Young what is going on there?

---

Ah yes a child with a gun.

Since it will not matter what I say, I give you a poem for my rebuttal.


Wordsworth

Youth returns not at the ticking of the clock:
nor Passion its ship again brings to dock.
Unnoticed has Lust gently faded away,
just as did spring, summer has not stayed,
nor shall He return upon another day!
When the blush has faded off the bloom,
and life is now in the evening gloom
of this ancient heart’s approaching doom
in my ears the resounding tock.
I the last, with balding head and graying locks,
find no reprieve or hope of salvation.
---------------------------------------------------------  -- So, studying a book on sonnets by Wordsworth may be somewhat useful if you want to learn how to write.

Ironic, laconic, iconic, despondent,
so weary and dreary and old.
At the turn of a phrase to be forward and bold
and make young girls crave,
this flesh, “I” with one foot in my grave,
they offer nothing to tempt me.

Samuel, Robert, my old friends
we were you know ‘til the end
it’s just the end came to soon, --too
it was not even noon
when you found your Brigadoon
and left me here alone.  -- The end of the rhyme is what seems to work here.


Then new friends I found,
I gathered them ‘round,
but then Percy drown, -- There is a problem with the sentence structure that makes it read fragmented.
Lord George Gordon also went down,
with and to the Greeks.
Then also gone was Keats,
and once again I am the last
and the least.

Was I prophetic, or was it a slip of the tongue,
When I wrote, “only the good die young?” 
I linger on, while they are done.
I sit here amongst my gold plated dung,
these medals around my neck are hung.
Lacking in nothing but the slightest lust
my gold shrivels into bullion of rust.
Better to have already been dust
than a Robin without his good fellows.

Thou Good fellow great Robin Puck,
“Flower of the purple dye,” pluck,
then call to your Lord Oberon
and bid him let us be gone.
Let us board the ship to Avalon,
where my friends have already fled.

There, I can rekindle my long dead fire
now I the craft my words to inspire.
As the whirlwind within builds ever higher,
I care not if it is my funeral pyre.
Weave the circle round me thrice
one time alone will suffice.
Then let it truly be said,
he on greatness at last has fed,
before he lay down his head,
and entered into paradise. -- Playing with Kubla Kahn, maybe add quotations around some of it.

–Erthona

I'm having trouble understanding some of this due to the syntax and whatnot. However, it could be tryptophan symptoms.
©2005-2015

[Erthona]

Brownlie,

"So, studying a book on sonnets by Wordsworth may be somewhat useful if you want to learn how to write."  

Sorry, I don't know where that came from. I do think one of Wordsworth strong points was his command of the forms, not quite as good as Tennyson, but close; it was content he was generally lacking, unless Coleridge was around to inspire him.

Yes, thank you. It should be "too". Will change in my copy.

"The end of the rhyme is what seems to work here." Not really sure what you mean. "Alone" is an off rhyme, unless one has a very strange accent and pronounces "alone" like "a-loon". Then "loon" would rhyme with "doon"

"Playing with Kubla Kahn, maybe add quotations around some of it."

Actually I thought of that (As I really hate having the least look of impropriety in my poems, and as I am quick to point it out in others, as I think anyone should), but as it is merely alluding to the last few lines in "Kubla Kahn" (see below) it would be difficult to even foot note it. The first is the closest.
The second usage only repeats a single word.

"Weave a circle round him thrice,       -   "Weave the circle round me thrice" I think this deserves a footnote.
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise."  -    "and entered into paradise."

"Weave the circle round me thrice1
one time alone will suffice.
Then let it truly be said,
he on greatness at last has fed,
before he lay down his head,
and entered into paradise."


1 Compare to Coleridge's "Kubla Kahn" fourth from last line: "Weave a circle round him thrice"

would that suffice?

____________________________________________________________________________________

Your poem is in pretty decent shape for not being edited yet. Hopefully, you are going to get rid of those capitals at the start of lines that aren't sentences. There are some lines I would question the point of, such as:

"When has the heifer or the blade of grass
Surprised the naked flesh across my neck?"

My response to that is, "why should it?" Your first line is great, but these 2 lines seems a great disconnect, despite speaking of cows and grass.

I'm not sure how something can be echoed dead? Could you explain it to me so I could understand. Evidently you have something specific in mind. I could understand it if "echoed"  were removed, but it seems that is the lynchpin of what you are trying to explain. However I have no problem understanding the line before it.

"My summons to immortal spirits of the ode"

Although I don't know if it is really in line with the mythology, as "Melpomene" would probably be the muse of the ode. There are four muses of poetry and she seems the one would fit. Of course you are referring to something else. So this is a line where the meaning is clear, but I am unsure what you are referring to as I have never heard of "immortal spirits of the ode". It is obvious you are going back to an older tradition where the poet ask for inspiration from some source. The nearest I can come would be an allusion to Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood", which is a slim reed indeed, but outside of creating from whole cloth I am at a loss.

"I’ve conjured chasing mythic skylarks."

Do you mean "I've conjured while chasing mythic skylarks"?

I have never heard of "mythic skylarks". In fact when I did a search on the internet the only thing I got was this page. For all intents you might have said angelic toads. Undefined and undefinable phrases like this seem to be the main problem in this poem. I'm assuming that the grammatical problems, such as the use of "Pleiades" without the use of an article (the)will be corrected in the edit.

(The following is a continuation of this thread's discussion and not primarily related to Brownlie's poem, although it uses it as a spring board into the topic.)
I think to go farther is unfair as this is still rough/unedited (Brownlie's poem). I would simply advise to look at all the phrases and make sure they describe something that a reader can understand. It is good you are trying to stretch the boundaries of metaphor and description, but they still must be within the range of what is recognizable. All the cool looking/sounding metaphors/descriptions in the world do a person no good if they do not translate into something the reader can comprehend. It doesn't matter if it somehow makes sense to me, the question is does it make sense to the reader.
I have noticed a problem during this age, from about the 1970's forward. People are so poorly trained in poetry that they have a completely false apprehension about it. The first and foremost of which is the dubious idea that somehow poetry that is obscure or difficult to understand makes it good poetry. This idea derives from reading poems, primarily in school, without understanding the context. What is thought to be obscure is simply a non-understanding of the context of the time the poem was written. It would be the same as thinking what made Shakespeare a genius was that he used "thees" and "thous". I have actually met people who thought this was true, and tried to write poetry with the use of these archaic pronouns. This is completely understandable in the United States, as most teachers, teach from a list of the "great poems" but haven't a clue as to why these poems are great; understandable, but not acceptable. So we have fast food mentality adults coming into the larger world and deciding for whatever reason they want to write poetry. They have at most a 10% understanding of what the poetry they are reading is doing, completely unaware of most of the poem. So when they write, they copy only the superficial aspects of the poems they have read without any true understanding, or worse an erroneous understanding of what they are attempting. I'll reference what I said earlier (although there are many others, just less obvious), that people write "free verse" but have never trained their the ear, which only comes with learning to write formal poetry. It might be of interest to note that Allen Ginsberg wrote only formal poetry for the first part of his life, and when he did begin to write "free verse" or "beat" it was with a very good understanding of the underlying rhythmic quality of poetry. However, for those who had not studied formal poetry (metered and rhymed), and more so, had actually written formal poetry, hadn't a clue what he was doing in his poetry. To them he was just writing words that had no rhyme and no meter, simply expressed his thoughts. Then people thought, well I can do that, and then I can share my brilliant insights with the rest of the world. whaa-hoo! If one approached such a person, and tried to explain where they were going wrong, their reply was the standard that was birthed in the beginning of political correctness. "Everybody has an opinion, yours is no better than mine!" Thus effectively insulating themselves from any kind of criticism that actually addressed the main problems of their "poetry". Willful ignorance is not a pretty thing, and it makes for even worse poetry. Whether people want to here it or not, clarity is a major problem with poetry today. Either a writer is unskilled in communicating his (I use the generic him which also includes she/her) point, or he is a follower of the who flung doo, where they just throw a bunch a words up and see what sticks, hoping because no one understands it, the reader will interpret it as too deep for them to understand, thus effectively blaming the reader for the lack of ability of the writer; i.e., "if you were smarter you would be able to make something out of my poetry because it is there to be had", when in actuality the only one being had is the reader. As most people are not trained in poetry, they go along with this BS, and agree to try harder in the future to understanding a poem that is not written to be understood.
It is really beyond comprehension how this occurs. Poetry is the only arena of writing that is excused from unclear writing. A person would certainly complain if he bought an item that needed to be assembled and the instruction were completely unintelligible. Oh wait, they most often are. But we do not accept that it is out fault, and if we were smarter we would be able to comprehend the instruction. No, we rail against the idiot who wrote the instruction as an incompetent boob. If, in the corporate world someone were to write up a report that was as incomprehensible as some of this poetry, they would probably lose their job, if not then, then the next time. If one buys a novel and it reads like the instruction to your new put-it-together-yourself home entertainment center, even though it has a name here and describes a car there, a house over there, but none seem to be connected to each other, one would quickly demand a refund and say "I got scammed".
Granted at times poets deal with difficult or unfamiliar topics, which is why metaphor is our main tool. However the point of metaphor is to make something which is not known, or a perception which is new known, available to the reader in a way the reader can understand. It is not used to purposefully obfuscate what is being communicated to make it appear more than what it actually is. Such deceit has no place in poetry.

Dale                   

   

[shemthepenman]

Hello,

yep, I wrote my comment drunk as a lord. Ignore it.

but still, 'til may be a personal preference (and I would like to hear your reasons for preferring ''til' over 'till' [economy of letters, maybe?]), I am just a little skeptical, is all. And I am sure I will get an essay on why 'til is just as valid as till, but I won't believe it. 'Til may not be wrong as in opposed to correct, but it is wrong as opposed to good it is also ironic you should talk about personal preference along with statements like 'it is not just my opinion'. I love you anyway, :*

anyhow, relating to the poem that inspired this discussion (a poem I really liked, by the way), I entirely disagree with the proposition that 'poetry is about making the obscure clear'. Fuck the reader that wants their own warm diarrhea spoon fed to them. Poetry is not a mathematical description or the pedant's ego boost. It is not simple and clear. If what you experience is a man sitting, smoking, then you are not a poet, you are anyone, a journalist, a landscape painter for chocolate boxes. It has nothing to do with obscurity or clarity, this is a nothing dualism; poetry is about sense, which is vague and fuzzy, but at the same time brutal and direct. I don't care to read that 'there was this beggar that used a poor baby as a prop' in more than 12  words! or maybe I do, but a newspaper article would do more. No, what I want, and anyone else looking to poetry to differentiate itself from other writing, is something more.

---

shemthepenman wrote: "you mean till, of course "

No actually I meant the abbreviated form of "until" - 'til. 'til - "aphetic variant of until". I wanted the single syllable as it creates a caesura. Although definition wise there is little difference between until, till, and 'til. For me, I pronounce "'til" much sharper and quicker than either "till" or "until". So for me, it creates a rhythmic quality I like in terms of expressing the last three words of the line.  
But thanks for watching out for me

dale

no, sorry, till is correct. 'til is just plainly wrong.

---

[Erthona]

How about looking the words up in the dictionary so you can see they all have roughly the same meaning, and are all valid. I fail to see why when I acknowledge that such and such is a personal preference, that is one choice is as valid as the other but I prefer this one, it somehow impinges upon anything else I have said, or at least you generalize it to do so (without any supporting facts). What kind of logic is that. I think you know the answer. I have already given my reason for preferring "'til" over "till". I see no need to repeat it. If you ignored it the first time, why should you not do so the second time. Besides this has nothing to do with the main topic. This is simply a side topic you decided to get fixated on. Probably as a result of some chemical combination I am no longer able to partake in, do to the fact it would probably kill me on the spot, and while I liked getting high, I also like living

Dale

[rayheinrich]

... Probably as a result of some chemical combination ...

As we are all the result of chemical combination, I fear it is bad form indeed
to metaphorically express our prejudices through the re-combinations of our characters.
These are best kept to ourselves. To do otherwise could provoke the ire of all and sundry
of the various etymological entities some of which are gods with exceedingly irritable
dispositions.

While I much prefer " 'til " myself for its sharp report (as you've already ably stated),
I hereby recognize any and all other forms of this expression as doing otherwise would
cast me into the camp of intolerance.

[Erthona]

Not to mention the philological persons (your alliteration I fear is better) such as the indomitable Dr. Elwin Ransom in C. S. Lewis' SciFi trilogy.

Although I believe I have already stated such, I have no bias against "till" or "until" and use both frequently.

Appreciate the support Ray!

Dale

[milo]

Not to mention the philological persons (your alliteration I fear is better) such as the indomitable Dr. Elwin Ransom in C. S. Lewis' SciFi trilogy.

Although I believe I have already stated such, I have no bias against "till" or "until" and use both frequently.

Appreciate the support Ray!

Dale

I prefer 'til as the lazy-man's until.

I prefer till when I need to do something to the soil for my garden.

The reasons are in those 2 lines.

IOW - you think that you can run but horses cant?

[Erthona]

milo spoke: "I prefer 'til as the lazy-man's until."

Aren't all contraction, and of course the unskilled poet

I cant pull a cart, but I have had the trots, and that is not an affiliation with an older type of communism at around the time of Frida Kahlo. I hear she and her husband Diego were very much into the trots movement, but then how could one not be. In fact I heard she allowed the originator to enter her in situ. Now that's embracing a movement...or something along those lines.

The paradox of communism is that were it ever in full force and succeeding, it would never allow to rise the sort of men who were responsible for giving it birth.


dale 

[shemthepenman]

How about looking the words up in the dictionary so you can see they all have roughly the same meaning, and are all valid. I fail to see why when I  acknowledge that such and such is a personal preference, that is one choice is as valid as the other but I prefer this one, it somehow impinges upon anything else I have said, or at least you generalize it to do so (without any supporting facts). What kind of logic is that. I think you know the answer.  I have already given my reason for preferring "'til" over "till". I see no need to repeat it. If you ignored it the first time, why should you not do so the second time.  Besides this has nothing to do with the main topic. This is simply a side topic you decided to get fixated on. Probably as a result of some chemical combination I am no longer able to partake in, do to the fact it would probably kill me on the spot, and while I liked getting high, I also like living

Dale

hello,

Fixation, unfixated. But I must say, I still think you have missed the point a little. but never mind.

under less chemically disorientated conditions: I would never dismiss or even comment on that which I did not understand, or was unclear to me. I would rather trust the author, and try to find that thing that I am missing, the fault is mine. And this isn't about translating the obscure into the clear, or anything like that.

for example, 'why 'finnegans wake', without the apostrophe?' I trust he had a reason, i just don't  know it (or didn't then). I could say, the lack of apostrophe is confusing and doesn't add to the poem... who is this Joyce fellow, anyway?!

it could turn out that it means nothing, a stylistic nonsense, pretentious crap... but fuck it, who cares, I may have learned something despite myself