[POETRY]: Is the ultimate...

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evolution of the poet to render the Thing unto itself? IS the ultimate attempt to render the mundane mundane (rather than, say, the mundane Mundane or dramatic)?

Ie, to wipe away the scrim of reality-as-thought and make the words the thing itself? (Yo, JtN, guess who else I've been reading: Francis Ponge - tho I don't think he achieves it but I get the feeling that's what he's trying.)

Yeh, I know its impossible (is it?) but.

― Cozen (Cozen), Friday, 28 February 2003 12:41 (twenty-three years ago)

I realise this is a bit of a shit question.

― Cozen (Cozen), Friday, 28 February 2003 12:45 (twenty-three years ago)

one month passes...

Wow: why did this thread never get taken up? The lad Cozen was really getting at something. James Kelman has said something similar about fiction.

― the pinefox, Thursday, 24 April 2003 11:36 (twenty-three years ago)

This sounds like young Wittgenstein, although he wouldn't have attributed such capabilities to a poet. Anyway, he later realized he was wrong.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Thursday, 24 April 2003 11:39 (twenty-three years ago)

Poetry is a GREAT EVIL and a SCOURGE and must be AVOIDED AT ALL COSTS. It is CLEARLY EVIL AND MUST BE STOPPED!!!

Heh heh, must stop saying this, having discovered that Handsome Soundartist's grandfather was actually quite An Important Poet.

― kate, Thursday, 24 April 2003 12:03 (twenty-three years ago)

HSAG=AIP=YAWN.

― RJG (RJG), Thursday, 24 April 2003 12:14 (twenty-three years ago)

I said, recently, that one can have enough poetry.

it was met with incomplete opposition. I wish it had been another way.

― RJG (RJG), Thursday, 24 April 2003 12:15 (twenty-three years ago)

Poetry in general = YAWN.

Poetry is a more insidious evil than even Indie Rock. Possibly because even more people think that they can write it, and an even smaller percentage of them are actually any GOOD at it.

― kate, Thursday, 24 April 2003 12:17 (twenty-three years ago)

James Kelman had something similar to say about fiction? I’d be interested in reading that, I’m curious as to how that would operate considering how different narratively-speaking the two fictions are. With prose your words move horizontally in time and space, whereas with poetry the items are invoked from above and sort of descend into a Tetris column.

Do you believe in poets? I’m not sure I do anymore, just poems maybe. A poem is a self contained universe whose fabric has glitched emitting a little ray out: the poem. The poem can be a little town, say, twinned with a lazy town in Medoc, France, people with spongy gums and skeet shooters could live there. But not the poet. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to not let a little of you escape into the poem: the smallest clinch of ego. The trick is to cut the ego down, create some perverse scheme of rhyme or meter, (render this invisible mind, no-one wants to be Yeats: “Why do you stop for so long at the end of each line, when reading, W.B.?” “Because I want them to hear how much work I’ve put in”. It is disgusting how much work you’ve put in.)

― Cozen (Cozen), Thursday, 24 April 2003 13:18 (twenty-three years ago)

Ooo, now I'm hella curious which An Important Poet it is. Even though it doesn't make a gobstopper's worth of difference!

― Chris P (Chris P), Thursday, 24 April 2003 17:19 (twenty-three years ago)

He can't be that important, actually. I mean, I'd never heard of him before. ;-) The first time I was in HSA's bedroom, I was wondering why he had so many copies of the same books. "Oh, those are my grandfather's books" explained HSA. Being drunk, I thought he just meant that his grandfather obsessively collected books of poetry or something. Found out, actually, no, his grandfather *wrote* them.

― kate (suzy), Thursday, 24 April 2003 17:28 (twenty-three years ago)

Well yes but I don't find poetry to be a yawn and read it and stuff so there's a slightly better chance that I'll have heard of him. But. There are no guarantees, I suppose.

― Chris P (Chris P), Thursday, 24 April 2003 17:45 (twenty-three years ago)

Erm, I'd rather not say online. I mean, HSA is clearly OK with me discussing *him* (and his astonishing sexual prowess) on ILX, but I'd rather not discuss his family, as they may not be OK with it.

― kate (suzy), Thursday, 24 April 2003 18:06 (twenty-three years ago)

get suzy to tell us.

― RJG (RJG), Thursday, 24 April 2003 18:10 (twenty-three years ago)

Suzy doesn't know HSA's granddad's name! Though Google certainly does! There's no family resemblance at all. Except around the beard. Though it appears that someone else in HSA's family is a celebrity chef. Yikes! And he will eat Thing! He must really like me. ;-)

― kate (suzy), Thursday, 24 April 2003 18:17 (twenty-three years ago)

Aw... you could e-mail his name to me and I could talk smack about him and you could casually work that into your conversation and... well, OK, I don't know what this would accomplish.

― Chris P (Chris P), Thursday, 24 April 2003 18:23 (twenty-three years ago)

Poet = someone who writes one of those Poem things?

― the pinefox, Thursday, 24 April 2003 20:26 (twenty-three years ago)

poet - inventor.

― RJG (RJG), Thursday, 24 April 2003 20:38 (twenty-three years ago)

poet = inventor.

: /

― RJG (RJG), Thursday, 24 April 2003 20:38 (twenty-three years ago)

Poet = someone who writes one of those Poem things?

In a sense yes, but they're not her poems they just come through her. Taking a proprietal attitude to the poet-poem axis is, I think, incorrect.

― Cozen (Cozen), Saturday, 26 April 2003 12:09 (twenty-three years ago)

I think I disagree. Give 'creators' their due. Whatever it is.

― the pinefox, Saturday, 26 April 2003 15:26 (twenty-three years ago)

I believe in poems.

― Cozen (Cozen), Saturday, 26 April 2003 15:31 (twenty-three years ago)

I believe in texts.

― Matt (Matt), Saturday, 26 April 2003 15:39 (twenty-three years ago)

I believe in Crystal Lite.

― Chris P (Chris P), Saturday, 26 April 2003 15:57 (twenty-three years ago)

I believe I can touch the sky.

― thom west (thom w), Saturday, 26 April 2003 16:44 (twenty-three years ago)

I think you have to be careful about taking what Francis Ponge says at face value.

― Rockist Scientist, Saturday, 26 April 2003 16:48 (twenty-three years ago)

six months pass...

blimey there were a lot of people talking rubbish rather than actually discussing this.

wordsworth sort of says in the preface to the lyrical ballads that he's trying to make the mundane mundane-in-an-interesting-way but then he starts going on about cows and farms and shit and i lose interest

― thom west (thom w), Sunday, 23 November 2003 01:41 (twenty-two years ago)

This is very much the stuff of Stevens' The Snow Man. I'm not sure the point is to reach the mundane though. More like to reach a point of observation deeper then the easy personifications we throw on our environment. Like working through subjectivity.

― bnw (bnw), Sunday, 23 November 2003 03:00 (twenty-two years ago)

actually i was completely wrong about the prelude thing, sorry about that

― thom west (thom w), Sunday, 23 November 2003 04:43 (twenty-two years ago)

I have to write about this sort of thing, but i don't really like it that much, but isn't it just not really the case that the poet is trying to render the thing in itself, what differentiates poetry from prose is the excess attention to language? but maybe are you saying something really complicated like that there are certain ways of purifying language so that it's completely mundane - or - somehow stripped of everything excessive to describing the mundane - or something like that, but really, I think that's just another way of saying that poetry is about trying to find the perfect word. I mean that's what it feels like when you're trying to write poetically, but that doesn't mean that's what's really happening. This is a kind of horrible thing to say, but I feel like what you're doing when you write poetically is just trying to prevent the reader from having any response accept the one you make them have - trying to control them and that's maybe why it feels like - romantic, or something, because it's needy, like a romance. you don't want the person you're romantically involved with to look the wrong way, either.

― - (maryann), Sunday, 23 November 2003 05:34 (twenty-two years ago)

Any "poetry is . . ." statement is already going to have problems because there are so many different approaches. If nothing else, there's always the polarity of Dickinson (compression) vs Whitman (expansion). The word "mundane" is too loaded with subjective negativity for me. The essence of whatever is being observed should have plenty of potential to it. It's your job to find it.

As for manipulating the reader, is there any for of communication this doesn't occur in? I think there's intent behind every expression. You should be trying to control the reader. The trick is not to let them see you doing it.

― bnw (bnw), Sunday, 23 November 2003 07:16 (twenty-two years ago)

Though of course that attention to compression or expansion are both included in the "Poetry is language that pays attention to itself as language" (OK that's badly worded but you know what I mean).

― Casuistry (Chris P), Sunday, 23 November 2003 07:55 (twenty-two years ago)

The poetry/prose line is always slippery. I mean I know fiction writers who are very exacting in their language. I sometimes still go back to the imperfect metaphor of the difference being like photography vs film.

― bnw (bnw), Sunday, 23 November 2003 08:16 (twenty-two years ago)

Well, "pays attention to itself" is not the same as "exacting" but at the same time of course much if not most poetry uses elements of prose (fuck, most poetry written in this country is nothing but prose broken into lines, it seems) and most prose includes aspects of poetry. That's not really a bad thing, nor does it mean the definition isn't good.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Sunday, 23 November 2003 09:32 (twenty-two years ago)

Nah, yer wrong.

At Xanadu did Kubla Kahn
Make a lovely cup of tea

Making the mundane mundane is what Big Brother is for.

― Johnney B (Johnney B), Sunday, 23 November 2003 11:40 (twenty-two years ago)

the problem with this as counter-example is that "a lovely cup of tea" is one mundane expression inserted into something recognisably not-mundane, though

― thom west (thom w), Sunday, 23 November 2003 22:37 (twenty-two years ago)

http://www.booksatoz.com/witsend/tea/orwell.htm

― thom west (thom w), Sunday, 23 November 2003 22:38 (twenty-two years ago)

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