Andrey's questions about poems (split from the intro thread)

[Leanne]

Precisely. Why do people who scream when they see a cockroach get a butterfly tattooed on their bums? Things do not have to be logical - in fact, deconstructing this to try to prove to you that poetry is not a chore is far too much of a chore. Well trolled.

[Achebe]

Precisely. Why do people who scream when they see a cockroach get a butterfly tattooed on their bums? Things do not have to be logical - in fact, deconstructing this to try to prove to you that poetry is not a chore is far too much of a chore. Well trolled.

Yes, the best tribute we can pay him is to let this thread die in a gotterdammerung of interpostal trollery.

---

Yeah, I guess I am betraying my dad's German roots a little there. 
But, the Reich would have considered me a sissy for sure. Fuck those assholes. I'm glad they're dead. 
I'm lucky that my ancestors immigrated from Germany in the 1800's, because I'm sure they would have been Nazi's if they had stayed. Bunch of racists, all.

I'm a Chinese-Peruvian with a touch of Romani-Jew transgender male. I can assure you that the Third Reich was not racist. Obama is Muslim. And screw the Eye-rakhees. Do you even go to Church?

[AndreyGaganov]

I'm an imagery girl myself. Rich metaphor and simile -- that's what does it for me. I know others that are about the sounds primarily and the content second. I'm all about the visual that I can create in my mind. What's challenging and amazing about poetry is it's ability to conjure scenes and evoke emotion with so few words. And, actually, I think the fewer words the better. More active involvement on the part of the reader is required to fill in the details than with a story that's all spelled out for you.

I see. So, would you say that one could draw a handful of comparisons between the landscape of poetry and the landscape of music ? E.g., different readers/reciters/listeners look for different things in poetry, and that it's all relative? There are no prerequisites to reading/listening to poetry? That you have to find the right poem that will ignite some kind of a spark within you (without going through the trouble of being educated with literary devices and such)? That perhaps there is a certain kind of poetic movement (and not all movements) that's right for you?

Yes, I do think that you need to find the right author and the right poems that speak to you. On average, I'd say that I love maybe about 1 in every 30 to 40 poems that I read. I like most poems I read, and can appreciate them through my knowledge of literary devices, but to really love something....it's individual taste, yes.

From a couple of things that you're saying, it seems like you might be expecting too ecstatic of an experience from poetry. Certainly, some poems have taken me there, but most just bring amusement, mild pleasure, interesting thoughts, simmering feelings of all flavors. I wouldn't worry too much if you're not transported by everything you read. If someone else loves a poem, that's them not you. One would hope that you'd learn to appreciate almost all good poetry, but it seems like you're really looking to make a love connection.

It'll take time and lots of reading. There's so much out there.

If I were you, I'd start with the "Poems you love" thread here -- there's lots of great stuff in there.

I mean, people say that Wagner is the bee's knees, but I never cared for him. Now Chopin, I've tried to raise him from the dead a few times.

You hit it on the nail when you touched on the 'ecstasy' aspect of it. As someone who's spend 12 years of his life listening to music (a practice that has no rules and calls for no prerequisites), that long period of time I was mostly capable of drawing pleasure from the timbre (quality of sound) of instruments and voices. Ostensibly, I don't get the same kind of angle with poetry ... so far. 

Certainly, some poems have taken me there, but most just bring amusement, mild pleasure, interesting thoughts, simmering feelings of all flavors.

As you've pointed out, my expectations are beyond just receiving mild pleasure. As I said a couple of times before, I have my own expectations of poetry, like learning/understanding an original and profound idea, though, as I understand, this has to change ... somehow. 

I'm just looking for the kinds of poems that can dignify poetry in ways that prose can't be, and justify the attempts to differentiate poetry from prose beyond mere concision and the not-so-blissful music of words.

[Leanne]

This: http://www.pigpenpoetry.com/thread-5446.html

If poems like that one don't show you why prose can't be used for everything, nothing will.

[AndreyGaganov]

Why does the poet not care immensely if his/her poem is received in exactly the same way it was delivered? Because (most) poetry is not about answers, but questions.

You are confusing me. Most poems I've read are not filled with questions, ... unless I misunderstood what you said. 

Please stop assuming that poetry and prose are at odds.

Yet people still try to sell me the idea that poetry can express the inexpressible, that there is beauty within (still not sure where that one came from). They are trying to differentiate poetry, so how are they not at odds?

Many of us write prose also, and will tell you that prose does not fit into one neat category. I do not choose a report format for a reflective essay. I do not write science fiction in the form of a policy document. I do not write a letter to the editor as if it was detective fiction.

Is this a part where you try to explain that certain kinds of poems are only suitable to certain kinds of audience? 

Prose, like poetry, has formats that best suit the audience and purpose and yet the boundaries are not so set in stone that one cannot fuse elements together or bleed one into another.

Are you saying that there are hybrid kinds of poems? (Like a haiku crossed with rhyming verse?)

[AndreyGaganov]

(2) existing for existence's sake - two different things (the latter of which, obviously, makes no sense at all).

Why does it make no sense at all? What are the axioms you are using to construct your argument? You are just making an arbitrary statement and presenting that as logically thought through. It's rubbish.

EDIT: existing for the pleasure of existing == existing not to convey information, but to provide auditory and visual stimuli through the use of words that have an effect on certain areas of the brain that respond to language and music. 
It's pretty obvious shorthand. If you did not get it, it could be because i) you are not familiar with the expression ii) you're trying to split hairs and come off as a smart dude. I hope it's (i).

No, I'm not familiar with the expression. I've no idea how (ii) could work.

[Leanne]

Poems aren't filled with questions, they inspire questions. At least, the good ones do. They make the reader reevaluate the world.

And of course there are hybrid poems. Or rather, poetry is like all art, in that it continually fluxes in response to society. Do you think we've all just been sitting back writing the same stuff Homer wrote for the last 10,000 years or so?

[AndreyGaganov]

Precisely. Why do people who scream when they see a cockroach get a butterfly tattooed on their bums? Things do not have to be logical - in fact, deconstructing this to try to prove to you that poetry is not a chore is far too much of a chore. Well trolled.

But how is it not a chore when it comes with rules of its own: 1) read aloud; 2) read over and over again; 3) come up with the appropriate tone; 4) do some research (a.k.a. looking for the information that the poet should have provided you with instead)? Come to think of it, why don't we read prose in the similar way - aloud and with the right tone?

[AndreyGaganov]

This: http://www.pigpenpoetry.com/thread-5446.html

If poems like that one don't show you why prose can't be used for everything, nothing will.

I'm gonna have to spend some time reading and re-reading and doing research. Whether or not I come up with some pros in favor of poetry, stay tuned.

[AndreyGaganov]

Poems aren't filled with questions, they inspire questions. At least, the good ones do. They make the reader reevaluate the world.

I'll keep that in mind. So, the poet can only lead without knowing what's at the end of the tunnel.  

And of course there are hybrid poems. Or rather, poetry is like all art, in that it continually fluxes in response to society. Do you think we've all just been sitting back writing the same stuff Homer wrote for the last 10,000 years or so?

Not necessarily precisely 'the same stuff', but maybe in the same form, with the same tone, the same rhyming schemes, the same rhythms, etc.

[Leanne]

Not necessarily precisely 'the same stuff', but maybe in the same form, with the same tone, the same rhyming schemes, the same rhythms, etc.

Yeah. This is proof right here that you haven't even read as far as the poems in these fora.

[rayheinrich]

               
                                                                    Sea Urchin Sushi

[just mercedes]

The gonads of a sea urchin - are they tasty? I've eaten lamb gonads, mountain oysters we called them, but I've never seen them in sushi.

[Leanne]

Where's srijantje when you need him to tell you about the gonads of nomads, the balls of Nepal, the sacks of the yaks both enormous and small? Sea urchins are salty, their roe rather sweet, just try to forget that it's fishy man meat.

[QDeathstar]

Andrey, what is your favorite kind of cheese?

Brie.

Brie? Why? Cheese is cheese. All cheese provides nutrition and having all these flavors is nothing more than a triumph of flavor over sustenance. Obscuring nutrition behind a mishmash of herbs and spices.

[ellajam]

Andrey, what is your favorite kind of cheese?

Brie.

Brie? Why? Cheese is cheese. All cheese provides nutrition and having all these flavors is nothing more than a triumph of flavor over sustenance. Obscuring nutrition behind a mishmash of herbs and spices.

All that work, curds and whey and all, drink milk.

[RiverNotch]

What I had in mind was the perceived need to obscure the meaning of the poem. This does sound like an irrational stance, true (I should have thought it through the first time I posted on this forum). However, my main concern remains to be: why metaphors?

It's not so much a reading comprehension problem as it is my problem with what is at the foundation of poetry. My argument is this: why does a poet feel the need to use metaphors when we already have prose? Why contrive a confusing piece of literature and make the reader work hard on its meaning when it is only supposed to convey an idea? What practical  advantage do metaphors have over simple terms?

Gut punch, ...

Sorry, I don't know what that means in this context. What am I fighting back here with a metaphor? A metaphor's practical advantage is that it gets the emotional point across. Again, compare, "oh, the twin towers getting hit by an airplane, that made me feel very bad" to "oh, the twin towers getting hit by an airplane, felt like someone shot me".

... plus technical terms on how red something is are simply not literary, ... 

... not literary but technical. I'm sorry, but how does this concern metaphors? 
See below.

... plus the idea of qualias and abstract thoughts being concretized for understanding.

Can't the qualias and abstract thoughts be expressed and understood without concretization?
Actually, they can't. That's the point of a qualia -- it's a thing you can't transfer without abstracting a thought first, period. Ie, how the color of the hair of the girl you like is red, sure, but as for how red, you can't really say, not without either comparing it to something else (thus, metaphor), or going through the convoluted process of determining the hair's wavelength etc. 
And the thing about abstract thoughts is that to express them without concretization is to make your thought inaccessible to about 99% of the audience -- with that other 1% getting an avenue to rape your argument in the arse by challenging your definitions. Thus, Kierkegaard constantly alluding to Abraham, Socrates talking about the Republic, Jesus Christ forming parables -- prose, sure, but functioning as extended metaphors. 

... And it's not contrived if it was considered literature before basically any other literary work.

Why would contrivance (or the lack thereof) be used as a criterion for determining whether something is literature or not? I didn't say contrived pieces of work were not literature -- I'm countering a point you implied in the following statement: Why contrive a confusing piece of literature and make the reader work hard on its meaning when it is only supposed to convey an idea? Really, as literature, and viewing things in a historical context, it's prose that's contrived, seeking to capture everything that can be captured in a semi-immortal form (as if our minds were printers), and attempting to conform the language of conversation to aesthetic purposes. In your context, perhaps poetry seems the more contrived --- but, even if everyone didn't agree with that view of history, to say so in a poetry-oriented website is just imprudent.

God, if you have to learn about the advantages of metaphor in the internet, then what the hell is up with the state of education today?

LOL. Now you know how it is, not only with the Nevada public school education, but also the Russian public school education. (I was born and partly raised in St.-Petesburg, Russia, so ... I know.) They don't really seem to care about teaching the substance that is at the core of culture; they are just people on a payroll.
I'm surprised it's partly Russia that fucked you over. I hear the Russians love their poetry............or maybe that's just in Doctor Zhivago.

Again, metaphors do not obscure the meaning of a poem. Either you don't actually know what a metaphor is -- that is, you are a baby to the whole idea of metaphors, *wink wink* -- or you are in some measure not-neurotypical. Most people do understand what metaphors are, know how much easier life is to employ them, and actually employ them in daily life (figures of speech, cliche, all those Val girl likes). Some poems do get all tense with the metaphors, and of course the really old (or really specific: honestly, I never liked The Wasteland) classics refer to things most non-scholars won't get, but relative to the stuff you should be reading, that shouldn't be common. The fact that you have to do a lot of research for what, based on your line of questioning, seems to be the most basic poetic (really, linguistic) devices, is making me raise an eyebrow.

But generally speaking, if all you seek in literature is the ideas transferred themselves (for I do believe that all works of art function to transfer ideas), and not just the beauty of the ideas and the ways by which they were presented, then, frankly, poetry, literature, really art in general, is not for you. That's sort of the point, the practice, of art -- not just to give out ideas, but to give them out beautifully, so as to enrich the mind in ways deeper and more profound than normal. Practical art is beautiful, thought-provoking art -- if it is not beautiful, if it does not use the devices of metaphor, sound, etc (and by etcetera, I include also all other devices that have yet to be used, for surely language is boundless), then it is not, as itself, practical, or perhaps it is simply not art. And a note: as for what beauty, and "enriching the mind in ways deeper and more profound than normal", I honestly can't answer what those are specifically, I'm not a professional aesthetic philosopher, and even asking a philosopher, those things are ultimately, I think, qualia, they are so subjective.

Or perhaps you're forming a false dichotomy between prose and poetry, but now this is more my reading of Frye's Anatomy of Criticism. That is to say, if the paragraph uses tons of sound effects, metaphor, and artsy fartsy contextualizations, then technically that piece of prose is poetry -- technically, prose only exists in legal briefs, in memos, in scientific papers, etc. It's just a different kind of poetry, with the issue being that you're reading one as incomprehensible, and the other as artistically perfect, when in fact they should both be read the same way. But I really can't say...

PSs: 

It could also be that all the poetry you've been exposed to is shit to you. I love Gluck, but I know how unpoetic she often sounds -- and I loved Prufrock, though I know how fucking incomprehensible that could be (again, I did not like The Wasteland -- maybe I should give it a retry, though). But really, you can't have been exposed to that much poetry, and still not understand why the medium is as old as language itself, and ultimately the progenitors of prose and drama.

And again, not a professional aesthetic philosopher. Not even a professional -- still working on a Bachelor's degree in Biology. I'm just a real avid procrastinator.

--

Poetry is communication. Yes, the poet has to get his point across -- if the poet's any good, he or she does -- and yes, how the reader receives it is important -- and if the reader's any good, he or she receives what the poet intended, then personalizes it. It is, of course, not the same sort of communication as direct prose: again, that emphasis on beauty, on making the message more weighty. Thus, the avenue for reinterpretation may be widened, but with skill and beauty, this shouldn't be much of an issue (or this as an issue could itself be the point: see the Bible, and how God trolls us with it).

Usually, each poem has a set of meanings of its own -- or even each poet -- or even each school and culture of poets. Yes, it takes digging, but usually, when you've read enough stories and poems and shit, the meanings should be easy enough to understand. You don't get that as much with music or the visual arts because those media are a bit more psychologically direct (they are the older media, I believe), and really, because the educational system often doesn't think teaching people culture is important (a stupid thing, of course, since without a common culture, a country can be easily divided. Thus, a fan club with no contracts may last much longer than a small-time international firm [whose common ground does not involve much money]).

But does this all mean that clarity is sacrificed? NO! Again, it's one sort of clarity for another. Clarity of, ahem, intellectual thought, over clarity of emotion, even visceral feeling (the way some sounds can turn one on -- say, this one poem I read which mimicked through its prosody the rhythm of a waltz), even spiritual feeling, with those newly received clarities meant to create beauty, to impress depth, etc. Or intellectual thought could even itself not be muddled, as in the case of a lot of Louise Gluck's best work, or perhaps in some of the arguments of Shakespeare.

--

Existing for existence's sake in poetry can exist, and usually does exist, in poems where the author refuses to speak about them, and the audience refuses to analyze them (say, the Bible, in certain communities -- the Church speaks, as well as reads!). To say that that doesn't make sense.........is to say that life doesn't make sense. Because really, why do we exist? Any religious answer is fundamentally beyond the realm of logic, ie doesn't make sense -- and any material answer is an oversimplification of life, and thus an error in logic, and thus doesn't make sense. Thus, it isn't really a problem -- there really are things that don't have logical answers to, and science and philosophy copped to that the moments they were born -- and to consider it as such, to admit this pointlessness then to refuse it because of said pointlessness, means that you, or at least your way of thinking, is the problem.

--

And if, after receiving all of our answers, then reading all the poems you can read, then reading all the philosophical texts and critical texts and whatever on poetry you can read, you still don't get it, then no, I wouldn't suggest giving up on poetry entirely ----- but I would suggest shutting up about it in a site that's dedicated to the enjoyment of poetry. I mean, if you were really destined not to get it (and if you're not-neurotypical, that's a big possibility), then keeping to it is unhealthy, but fine, you're free to poison yourself -- however, asking more-basic-than-14 (and yeah, our answers will be different, but ultimately it's the expression of our answers, and not the fundamental truths on which our answers are founded, which are different) questions about it in this site might end up poisoning others as well. That is to say, accept this forum's social contract, and adapt.

But overall, I don't think you're a troll -- your questions don't seem so mean-spirited, and I haven't seen you truly bother anyone yet. Maybe you just really aren't neurotypical -- which isn't a bad thing, my favorite fictional characters isn't (and also my psychotherapist says I have traits that aren't, and also some family members are involved in that profession), but it is unfortunate in the context of you appreciating poetry. 

(redundancy for the win! redundancy for the win! Wagner is the best!)

[AndreyGaganov]

Not necessarily precisely 'the same stuff', but maybe in the same form, with the same tone, the same rhyming schemes, the same rhythms, etc.

Yeah. This is proof right here that you haven't even read as far as the poems in these fora.

Not really a proof, though this is true: I don't want to bother with the poems here until I ready enough poetry out there. I believe someone here said that you have to read a lot of serious poetry before you come here and bother giving feedback. 

I thought by 'we' you meant the world as a whole, not 'we' the people of the forum.

[AndreyGaganov]

Andrey, what is your favorite kind of cheese?

Brie.

Brie? Why? Cheese is cheese. All cheese provides nutrition and having all these flavors is nothing more than a triumph of flavor over sustenance. Obscuring nutrition behind a mishmash of herbs and spices.

You can't just lump flavors of cheese and styles of poetry together. You can taste cheese, you can sense it with your taste buds. How can you experience poetry in any style?

[AndreyGaganov]

Sorry, I am at work right now, so I'll try to take on as many replies as possible during that time.

A metaphor's practical advantage is that it gets the emotional point across. Again, compare, "oh, the twin towers getting hit by an airplane, that made me feel very bad" to "oh, the twin towers getting hit by an airplane, felt like someone shot me".

Sounds like a simile than a metaphor. But even so, even if we did rephrase it as a metaphor, ... the delivery of an emotional point would make a lot of sense to me if the speaker in the poem is someone worth empathizing with.

By the look of it, the metaphor here in question does not seem to be used just to deliver an emotional point across, but to describe the magnitude of the pain to the best of the writer's ability.