Friday, January 30, 2009
Friday, January 23, 2009
LITERARY THEORY
Preface
So large and perhaps intimidating a section may need a few words of explanation. Some readers will find it hard going, and more will wonder why it's necessary.
First it should be said that theory has definite limits. English departments and writing schools generally provide their students with a theoretical background to their future labours. But once exams are over, most students happily dispense with theory and take to the practical application of what has been taught them, i.e. in the craft that will earn them standing in their community and a modest (usually very modest) income. Good writers are intuitive creatures, and they come to know instinctively when something has to be recast, shortened or bolstered with argument. Theory is there to help them should they need it, but its wider reaches and philosophical implications are not generally of interest.
Theory does not deal with absolutes but with possibilities, speculations, elusive chains of thought. Those who write "now Derrida has shown that. . . or "with our better understanding of post-colonial issues. . . " are laying claim to what does not exist. These are philosophical positions, with insights and modes of argument. It is perfectly possible to believe that the senses consistently deceive us, for example, and to argue that this world is a delusion. And that position, respectable and with a long history behind it, brings certain consequences that philosophy explores. But the issues remain speculative, and expounding Berkley's theories to the magistrate's bench will not get us off a speeding fine. Much in life is conducted by shared values, tacit assumptions, unsupported codes of behaviour, and these are only dug up and examined when the unexpected happens.
But today much is being questioned, particularly in the arts of the avant garde: poetry, visual arts, music. The more progressive arts wish to be challenging and experimental and free to represent the world in their own way. Sometimes their explorations are guided by theory, or by deductions from current theory, but more usually the theory acts in a consulting or supporting role. To explain themselves, obtain employment and get their work sold, their protagonists extract what they can from notions and fashionable opinions that float round the art world. The result may be a patchwork of inconsistent ideas imperfectly understood, but critics, gallery owners and writers of concert notes ask for these viewpoints, and artists find it comforting to have them.
Many twentieth-century poetry movements boil down to very dubious notions, as they have over the centuries. Poets issue statements which are vague, wildly inconsistent and hardly followed through. Manifestos urge crusades to claim aesthetic new ground, which exists only through their own misunderstandings. Critics announce new associations of poets, who themselves deny such a movement exists. Even more vexing is radical theory. Even if largely a tangled mass of assertions and misunderstandings of technicalities, it is still necessary reading. For all its deficiencies, theory can focus attention on what writers should be trying to do, act as a prophylactic against the false and stultifying, and open up disciplines that support writing and are fascinating in their own right.
A Correct Theory?
Is there now a generally correct theory of literature? No. Is there a body of thought that is broadly accepted? Far from it: the scene is a battlefield of opinions and assertions, with little supporting thought or experiment.
What then? First we shall find in this section that matters are not much better in other disciplines, though the battle is more discretely conducted. And second we should note the particular value of literature, which is so often lost sight of. Logic and mathematics seem more worthy contenders for truth, and science is more practical. But by investigating the alternatives, meeting them on their own ground, we find that logic and science have enormous shortcomings. Both work towards abstraction, but cannot find a bedrock for their beliefs. There are many types of logic and mathematics, and each is not wholly compatible with others. Science in the end comes down to procedures which long experience has found to work.
The arts have a different conception of truth, and aim at fullness and fidelity to human experience. By a twist of fate, science itself — through complexity theory, research in brain functioning, and in some aspects of linguistics — is now suggesting that poetry's view is not simply a viable alternative, but in some ways closer to how human beings really function.
Worth Pursuing?
What should also be obvious, but is perhaps worth stressing, is that literature is not built on or even assessed by theory. It is all too easy to justify an atrocious piece of writing by selective appeal to abstruse matters. Literary theory explores and attempts to evaluate the bases of criticism, but literary criticism itself is a practical activity carried out in a community of interests. Ability comes with experience, by reading and thinking on a wide range of material, literature and criticism. And most particularly by writing ourselves, even if it's only notes, thumbnail sketches, or letters to friends. For those who do wish to press on, I offer below a defence of literary theory for the jobbing poet.
Literary Theory: A Defence
Why bother with theory? Fascinating to academics, but surely not to the professional writer who has a living to earn? But poetry is more a calling than a career. The larger publishing houses subsidize their poetry publications with profits elsewhere: best-sellers, gardening and cookery books, textbook updates. Poets support themselves by reviewing, adjudicating, workshops and the odd radio appearance. Poetry is a minority interest, where commercial rules seem hardly to apply. {1}
But surely there are standards? We can learn from the pronouncements of fellow practitioners: scan the reviews in the more literary publications, analyze the essays in academic journals and leading poetry magazines. Of course, and so we should. But poets disagree, a good deal more privately than in print, and there exists not a consensus but a kaleidoscope of unexamined and partisan opinions. Reviewers do what is possible, but the fee doesn't allow more than a cursory reading, and it is usually the shape of their own copy that exercises their minds. Academics generally fight shy of contemporary work. Poetry magazines, then: the record of professional judgement? Sometimes. But in general their editors are ludicrously overworked — with subscriptions to chase, copy to type, hundreds if not thousands of submissions to read between issues. Whatever the claims, space for the unknown poet is limited, and star billing in a top magazine very long odds indeed. {2}
Supply has always exceeded demand in the arts, however, and competition is only a little sharper than the usual dogfights of business and the professions. Wherever we look — Tang China, Republican Rome, Mughal Delhi — we find the literati have promoted and traduced each other in their scramble to the top. Time sorts out reputations, separating the good from the indifferent, and we must remember that if Wang Wei was known throughout China, his greater contemporary Du Fu died destitute and ignored. Literature has always been hard to read, and harder still to assess, and a lifetime's devotion to its intricacies is hardly sufficient to appreciate the better writers in their varied dimensions.
But, you say, but I'm not aspiring to great heights. Something memorable, pleasing and apt is all I intend, just for myself, and my immediate circle of friends. Very well: dispense with theory. Your work will jog along with the great majority, neither original nor necessarily bad. And in the literary world where so much is built on airy hopes and opinions — 75% of US poets never earn anything — there is much to be said for modest realism. {3}
But for those who want to get ahead of the pack? Reviewers play safe, and editors don't write critiques. Workshop conveners do their best, and fellow practitioners are sometimes helpful, but ultimately the judgements will be yours. Only you know, more or less, what you intended. Poems start in odd phrases, an image, a tune in the head, a deeply incoherent pain. How these develop is the poetry. There is nothing difficult in stringing words together, not the backbreaking labour of novel-writing, or the exhaustion of getting actors to stage your play properly. It's in responding to what you have written, feeling it, understanding it, extending its possibilities with imagination, honesty and sensitivity. And that means very fine discriminations. Verbal originality, wide sympathies, generosity of heart and a compassion for the human condition are essential for poetry, but they are nothing without continual exercise and training. Character above all makes an artist, the infinite capacity to be honest and take pains. And those pains constitute criticism, self-criticism, which cannot be evaded. Learn all that you can if you would see your work clearly, with the depth and detachment to understand its effect on others.
Very well: criticism, you say, but not theory. One is practical and is judged on the sense it makes of the poem: how well it explains, illuminates and appraises. The second is aesthetics, a branch of philosophy, an altogether more intellectually strenuously activity. The critic must realize as completely and sensitively as possible whatever is before him on the page. {5} The philosopher aims for generality, consistency and objectivity, drawing his arguments ever tighter to avoid refutation. Even aesthetics, which must serve both masters, finds the combination uncomfortable, and good philosophers are not noticeably good critics, nor the other way round. But unless criticism is content to remain personal preference, an unsupported elaboration of gut feelings, there must be some larger body of understanding, some agreement as to what poetry is and does.
Possibly that understanding will only be secondary to begin with, before analysis feeds through into our responses. Poetry is initially an event, an experience, something arousing delight and approval. We do not conjure up theory as we read or listen. But afterwards we consider, reread, re-enjoy. Theory helps us to map out those responses, think what they amount to. It is surely a common observation that responses are not settled, that appreciation comes slowly, after much effort. Criticism is not a handing down of judgements, but an education in our own responses, of faculties which we need to appraise and extend our own work. And our poems also shift from day to day in our appraisal, until they arrive at what our skills and time cannot materially improve.
But what purpose does theory serve in the immediate present, before we have grown to critical maturity? Perhaps we should call it a book of reference, something resembling those guides to grammar we consult when we're unsure of some expression. Theory will not dissuade us from calling something banal or plodding, but we shall know the grounds of such judgements. And if we reflect further we shall find ourselves asking more searching questions. While everyone wrote in much the same way, as in Augustan England, guiding principles could remain unexamined, but that is not the case today. Widely different views of art and society are canvassed in contemporary literature, and these determine how we respond to what grows increasingly more challenging and specialized.
Radical Theory
Many commentators would disagree. {6} There has been altogether too much theory of late: wildly speculative, politically-motivated, opaque and unhelpful. A bludgeoning style, riddled with non sequiturs and appeals to fashionable gurus, destructive of literature and a good deal else. Perhaps so. Large sections of current literary theory are preposterous, too wrong-headed to be worth untangling by the professional philosopher, an affront to commonsense and practical experience. But the older procedures of marshalling fact and argument are apparently tainted with the shortcomings of western society, complicit with its cheap intellectualizations, its hypocrisies and technical barbarism. {7} Perhaps the personal and the authentic, what literature has championed down the ages, have been set aside by a rampant materialism. Academic life has been terrorized by crass market forces, literature prostituted, the publishing houses hijacked by lawyers and accountants indifferent to art. {7} Yes, but one weapon remains: language itself. From its obvious imperfections, its ad hoc growth, and the mysteries of its ultimate creation, can be created a belief that meaning is a delusion, a vanity of vanities, a code that ramifies into itself, with no real anchorage on the world or our affections.
Perhaps the English Departments, into which radical criticism irrupted in the late sixties and seventies were slow to appreciate the hopes and misunderstandings employed. Perhaps they were not trained, these mild-mannered academics, in the linguistics, psychiatry, politics and aesthetics that now seemed necessary, and they found academic colleagues kept quietly to the other side. But that has changed, and battle lines can now be seen zigzagging between contending parties, most particularly in the Internet resources.
But the rest should not blithely ignore the issue. Radical theory rules in many English departments and in countless literary publications. Unless your productions observe current fads they will be rejected. Most certainly it is not sufficient to study the market and adopt the right dress codes. You will be found out, your slumming despised. Your work must positively reek of the right attitudes if it is to pass beneath the gaze of editorial boards. Cynical advice? Remember that to be published regularly calls for a long and coolly thought-out strategy. Poems have to look right. In poet and poem, first appearances count, and go on counting throughout the selection process.
But there is another reason for attending to theory. Poetry is the workshop of language, the most acute and comprehensive way we have of expressing ourselves. And in poetry the medium is words. Prose may employ ready-made phrases — generally has to, given the needs of a busy world — but poetry works at a deeper level. One essential distinction between poetry and prose — and only one: refer to aesthetics for the arguments — lies in the more sustained and elaborate attention paid to its constituent parts. Words for poets have meanings, appropriate uses, associations, connotations, etymologies, histories of use and misuse. They conjure up images, feelings, shadowy depths and glinting surfaces. Their properties are marvellous, endless, not to be guessed at from casual inspection. And each property — meaning, association, weight, colour, duration, shape, texture — changes as words are combined in phrases, rhythms, lines, stanzas and completed poems. Out of these properties the poetry is built, even if the end cannot be entirely foreseen but grows out of the very process of deployment, that continual, two-way dialogue between writer and poem. Radical theory was often wildly incoherent, but it dared to ask what had been overlooked in more traditional approaches. What purpose does language serve? How does it mediate between ourselves and the outside world? What happens when we view language through such disciplines as linguistics, psychiatry, sociology?
The exercise needed doing, {9} even if the radical critics who went shopping to continental philosophy came home with indigestible notions. Continental philosophy can be luminously clear, full of insights and imaginative suggestions, but a long training is needed for sensible use. The radical critics cut corners: concepts were snatched at, names dropped, and the whole wrapped up in a worse-than-academic style. Perhaps they more lost themselves in these dense verbal thickets, but the radical critics were not wrong in their basic intuitions. Language is an important matter, and deserves the writer's continued study. Certainly the radical critics erred in their choice of champions — psychiatry, semiotics, Structuralism, Post-structuralism and Marxism — but the exploration is valuable if conducted properly. Rhetoric, hermeneutics, metaphor theory, depth psychology, brain functioning and cognitive science do give back a key role to writers, though it is one where they must stop playing God, and assume more mundane and human activities.
What these new approaches offer can be seen here. A Summing Up concentrates on the approaches that survive scrutiny. The Criticism sections show the theories in operation. Nonetheless, there remain two traditional, perhaps inveterate, resistances to theory. One argues that literary theory is unnecessary, ineffective, restrictive and reductive. The second contends that theory has done more harm than good to twentieth century literary criticism. To these we now turn.
Theory is Unnecessary
Writing is a craft learnt by emulation and practice. {10} And in the harsh world of commercial publishing, novels, guides, biographies and feature articles make their way on their perceived merits, not on underlying theory. Indeed something showing its stitching can only be maladroit or unfinished.
That does not mean that theory was irrelevant or unhelpful. Theory at its most basic, those practical maxims that writers carry in their heads — maintain the viewpoint, shun cliché, employ the active tense — are applications of the aesthetic demands for pleasing shape and emotive appeal.
No doubt theory has its limits. Five minutes of practical demonstration may be worth an hour of written instructions, and there are many areas of everyday skill — tasting of food, riding a bicycle — where language is particular limited. {11} But that shortcoming is with language rather than with theory, and if theory is no better than the language it employs, it need not be worse.
But theory must nonetheless make sense in its own terms — i.e. must not only explain the "facts" but combine those explanations into a larger, autonomous and self-referencing whole. Of course there are dangers in such a coherence view of truth. But a theory that glibly explained everything would not be theory but a myth. Ideas grow by resistance, by being measured against experience, and there is nothing in the world which is free of assumptions and preconceptions, however much familiarity may persuade us otherwise.
Theory is Ineffectual
But not only is theory unnecessary, it is argued, but ineffectual. See how many theories have gone their way, and yet the giants of literature — Homer, Kalidasa, Du Fu, Rumi, Shakespeare — bask unmolested on the peaks of Parnassus. On the contemporary scene there may be junketings of the literary stockmarket, but the canon of English literature remains largely the same. New techniques and theories may radically change the scientific disciplines — undoubtedly do: witness the electron microscope or plate tectonics — but theory in the arts has no such power.
Is that true? Past writers do not enjoy their reputations regardless, but through the various schools of criticism. The theories were no doubt incomplete but gave novel perspectives and insights, which we inherit. Often a writer's stature was by no means apparent to contemporaries. Success, popularity, giving the age what it demanded — yes, but the public is ever fickle and most writers went through periods of neglect or opprobrium. Appreciation grows as work is read and discussed, and the terminology of that discussion is theory, something additional to the work. We read not to rank but to enjoy, and to understand our own lives a little better. {12} That we do recognize the defining elements in great writing is testimony to our ability to abstract, generalize, derive ideas and concepts — in short to make theories and test them.
Theory is a Diversion
We first strive to understand a poem, then ask ourselves what is good, what is bad, and why. But all too often, in books, journal and magazine articles, a rather circular argument appears. The poem was written by an author of importance. We know that because literary theory has asserted so. Important authors write important poems. We can therefore dispense with evaluative analysis of the poem in question, and simply display our erudition by showing how the poem conforms to certain tenets of contemporary theory. In fact, we'd be wise to dispense with criticism, since Professors X, Y and Z have staked their reputation on the writer's importance, and we shall need the favourable opinion of them, and of the literary community at large, if we are to advance in our academic careers.
Much of that is surely inevitable, and contemporary journals naturally look for contemporary viewpoints. But theories still need to be tested, to prove that do indeed explain properly why we like certain aspects of a poem. We need to see a. that the theory explains our liking better than do other theories, b. that the theory fully explains that liking, and c. that all aspects of the poem's quality are explained by the theory. If the theory fails in these respects, then any decently critical approach requires that we start probing and modifying the theory. Repeated testing, and not appeal to authorities, is what makes theory reliable.
Theory is Reductive
But a more general objection is urged. Theory is pernicious, a generalization from actual works of literature, and therefore reductive. {13} Determine what is common to the very different tragedies of Sophocles, Shakespeare and Racine, and we shall have a very meagre yardstick with which to measure the work of other playwrights. And we shall miss the ways these masters reflected and transcended the genre and expectations of their times.
Of course. But theory is not simple generalization. Newton is not honoured for observing that objects invariably fell to earth but by intuiting and then substantiating his general laws of motion — laws which were far from obvious but which linked and explained the most diverse of phenomena. Traditionally, science is a search for invariable relations and regularities that appear when phenomena are studied by the procedures laid down by the relevant community. Perhaps there is now a realization that the reductive approach works badly for social and biological behaviour. But whatever theories may represent, they operate on a level different from the phenomena they explain, and are subject to different requirements: to coherence, explanatory power, comprehensiveness, simplicity and elegance.
Literature is not science. We do not seek in literary theory the replicable results of scientific experiment, nor expect its clinching predictions. But we do want illumination, a view deeper and more comprehensive than before. And as for definition, which is a separate requirement, the difficulties of precise and unambiguous specification were long ago considered by Wittgenstein's theory of games. If we intuit greatness in Shakespeare, it is literary theory that provides that intuition with its wider habitation and a name. Theory crystallizes, develops and tests that intuition on a broader stage.
Theory is Restrictive
Can we be blinkered by theory, refusing to recognize excellence because current theory supplies no suitable criteria for judgment? Undoubtedly: history is littered with writers neglected in their lifetime who later became important: Leopard, Hopkins, Vallejo, etc. Yet it was not theory as such that delayed recognition, but a narrow provincialism of taste, the very thing that theory with its wider viewpoints seeks to overcome.
Perhaps theory does not possess such liberality and tolerance, but is coercive and possessive? So contend the irrationalists. Paul Feyerabend argued that true science was being stifled by the scientific establishment, an institution as self-serving and undemocratic as the medieval Christian Church. Barthes argued on Marxist lines that ideology created meaning. Foucault saw language as an instrument of state repression.
Some evidence was provided, more by way of illustration than proof perhaps. And certainly science polices its communities, their practices and their habits of belief. The objectivity of the scientific paper is a deception, a rhetoric employed to publicize personal achievement under the guise of selfless furtherance of knowledge. But then language is a complex web of semantic interactions in which there is no sharp distinction between the individual and public or between the literal and the metaphoric. {14}
Additionally, and very importantly, however, language is a social construction, and a collective representation, so that discrepancies between the real and imagined soon crop up, a point John Davidson used to validate his very different theory of meaning. Do such discrepancies appear? Not to any obvious extent. So what remains to the irrationalists? We all suffer, they suppose, from the collective and sustained delusions that psychoanalysts claim to understand and cure. And the evidence for such delusions? None; there can't be, as the ever cunning superego removes all knowledge of our sickness. Well then: we turn to the cures of psychoanalysis, and find them equally nonexistent. {15}
Criticism Misled
So to the second group of arguments, that literary criticism has been distracted from its proper job by an over-reliance on critical theory. Is this so? Probably yes, but with this proviso. It is not theory per se that led criticism astray, but the wrong theories. Many scholars pointed out shortcomings with earlier theories of literature, but there were few attempts to build better. Humanism with its inherent belief in the perfectibility of man, New Criticism with its simplistic psychology, Structuralism with its mathematical analogies between literature and society, semiotics which misread its originator, Poststructuralists with theories contrary to common sense and the authorities quoted — surely these should have been overturned? Perhaps it was academic caution, the realization that no profit was to be had in fishing these troubled waters. Or the increasing specialization in university life that kept scholars on the narrow escalators of their careers.
Yet perfectly sensible theory has been available throughout the twentieth century. Aesthetics is not easy reading, nor much developed in Anglo-American schools of philosophy, but literary scholars might well have gone back to the philosophers from whom Coleridge drew his inspiration. They might have read Collingwood or Dewey or Cassirer. Or they might simply have asked themselves what spiritual or practical or ethical good was conferred by the award of a degree in English Literature.
Conclusions: Place of Theory
What conclusion can we reach, reviewing the vagaries of theory and criticism of the last century? How can these notes possibly help in the writing of poetry?
In these ways:
1. Theory requires us to look at the larger picture. Had literature been approached with some grounding in aesthetics, some realization that expression, purpose, fidelity to life, and formal aspects all had their part of play, we might have had poets prepared to go out and write cogently on matters of deep and lasting importance. It is at least to the credit of radical criticism that it took seriously, and still takes seriously, the philosophical issues involved.
2. Though much contemporary theory serves only to perplex and discourage the contemporary writer, there are important questions raised. Hence the Theory section, which provide material to critically assess, to separate the plausible from the bogus, and to put down intellectual roots.
3. The subjects which current literary theory claims to oversee are fascinating domains in their own right. Their study enriches, deepens and invigorates our understanding of the world. Writing which remains in ignorance of larger issues condemns itself to provincialism, neither interesting to the present age or those to come. No doubt the subjects touched upon are too complex to be digested in their entirety, but these notes may enable the reader to understand the basic issues in the increasing amount of material becoming available on the Internet.
4. Indeed, far from inhibiting expression, a true understanding of theory is an immensely liberating experience. Rules all have some basis in theory, which the writer must understand to escape from blind conformity.
5. Theory can also be the means to better writing. Whatever the beginner supposes, his ideas and outlooks come from somewhere, and the self-evident is usually the shallow and unexamined public mind. Humanism was inspiring but did not stoop to verification. Radical theory is closer to contemporary realities, but is often shabby in detail. Both can be brought into hermeneutics and a deeper view of human functioning that science is now developing. What we understand of ourselves, and the world, is what we write about, and that understanding in the end needs outlooks, world-views and philosophies. At its very least, theory serves as a prophylactic against the preposterous and stultifying, and may provide something of the unifying inspiration that artists seek in their work.
But not only artists. We are all social creatures. Communication, so necessary and instinctive to us, can be done well or badly, so that inescapably art enters into all human activities. Many attempts have been made this century to identify the distinguishing features that separate art from non-art, poetry from prose, the authentic from the secondhand. They have failed. Art is too various and pervasive to be compartmentalized.
That is no argument against standards, however, or reason for not doing well what is anyway inescapable. No doubt that calls for many human qualities, and will involve our human frailties, individual and communal. Yet imagination is not a private indulgence but an inheritance with demands and responsibilities through which we learn the geography of our common home.
So large and perhaps intimidating a section may need a few words of explanation. Some readers will find it hard going, and more will wonder why it's necessary.
First it should be said that theory has definite limits. English departments and writing schools generally provide their students with a theoretical background to their future labours. But once exams are over, most students happily dispense with theory and take to the practical application of what has been taught them, i.e. in the craft that will earn them standing in their community and a modest (usually very modest) income. Good writers are intuitive creatures, and they come to know instinctively when something has to be recast, shortened or bolstered with argument. Theory is there to help them should they need it, but its wider reaches and philosophical implications are not generally of interest.
Theory does not deal with absolutes but with possibilities, speculations, elusive chains of thought. Those who write "now Derrida has shown that. . . or "with our better understanding of post-colonial issues. . . " are laying claim to what does not exist. These are philosophical positions, with insights and modes of argument. It is perfectly possible to believe that the senses consistently deceive us, for example, and to argue that this world is a delusion. And that position, respectable and with a long history behind it, brings certain consequences that philosophy explores. But the issues remain speculative, and expounding Berkley's theories to the magistrate's bench will not get us off a speeding fine. Much in life is conducted by shared values, tacit assumptions, unsupported codes of behaviour, and these are only dug up and examined when the unexpected happens.
But today much is being questioned, particularly in the arts of the avant garde: poetry, visual arts, music. The more progressive arts wish to be challenging and experimental and free to represent the world in their own way. Sometimes their explorations are guided by theory, or by deductions from current theory, but more usually the theory acts in a consulting or supporting role. To explain themselves, obtain employment and get their work sold, their protagonists extract what they can from notions and fashionable opinions that float round the art world. The result may be a patchwork of inconsistent ideas imperfectly understood, but critics, gallery owners and writers of concert notes ask for these viewpoints, and artists find it comforting to have them.
Many twentieth-century poetry movements boil down to very dubious notions, as they have over the centuries. Poets issue statements which are vague, wildly inconsistent and hardly followed through. Manifestos urge crusades to claim aesthetic new ground, which exists only through their own misunderstandings. Critics announce new associations of poets, who themselves deny such a movement exists. Even more vexing is radical theory. Even if largely a tangled mass of assertions and misunderstandings of technicalities, it is still necessary reading. For all its deficiencies, theory can focus attention on what writers should be trying to do, act as a prophylactic against the false and stultifying, and open up disciplines that support writing and are fascinating in their own right.
A Correct Theory?
Is there now a generally correct theory of literature? No. Is there a body of thought that is broadly accepted? Far from it: the scene is a battlefield of opinions and assertions, with little supporting thought or experiment.
What then? First we shall find in this section that matters are not much better in other disciplines, though the battle is more discretely conducted. And second we should note the particular value of literature, which is so often lost sight of. Logic and mathematics seem more worthy contenders for truth, and science is more practical. But by investigating the alternatives, meeting them on their own ground, we find that logic and science have enormous shortcomings. Both work towards abstraction, but cannot find a bedrock for their beliefs. There are many types of logic and mathematics, and each is not wholly compatible with others. Science in the end comes down to procedures which long experience has found to work.
The arts have a different conception of truth, and aim at fullness and fidelity to human experience. By a twist of fate, science itself — through complexity theory, research in brain functioning, and in some aspects of linguistics — is now suggesting that poetry's view is not simply a viable alternative, but in some ways closer to how human beings really function.
Worth Pursuing?
What should also be obvious, but is perhaps worth stressing, is that literature is not built on or even assessed by theory. It is all too easy to justify an atrocious piece of writing by selective appeal to abstruse matters. Literary theory explores and attempts to evaluate the bases of criticism, but literary criticism itself is a practical activity carried out in a community of interests. Ability comes with experience, by reading and thinking on a wide range of material, literature and criticism. And most particularly by writing ourselves, even if it's only notes, thumbnail sketches, or letters to friends. For those who do wish to press on, I offer below a defence of literary theory for the jobbing poet.
Literary Theory: A Defence
Why bother with theory? Fascinating to academics, but surely not to the professional writer who has a living to earn? But poetry is more a calling than a career. The larger publishing houses subsidize their poetry publications with profits elsewhere: best-sellers, gardening and cookery books, textbook updates. Poets support themselves by reviewing, adjudicating, workshops and the odd radio appearance. Poetry is a minority interest, where commercial rules seem hardly to apply. {1}
But surely there are standards? We can learn from the pronouncements of fellow practitioners: scan the reviews in the more literary publications, analyze the essays in academic journals and leading poetry magazines. Of course, and so we should. But poets disagree, a good deal more privately than in print, and there exists not a consensus but a kaleidoscope of unexamined and partisan opinions. Reviewers do what is possible, but the fee doesn't allow more than a cursory reading, and it is usually the shape of their own copy that exercises their minds. Academics generally fight shy of contemporary work. Poetry magazines, then: the record of professional judgement? Sometimes. But in general their editors are ludicrously overworked — with subscriptions to chase, copy to type, hundreds if not thousands of submissions to read between issues. Whatever the claims, space for the unknown poet is limited, and star billing in a top magazine very long odds indeed. {2}
Supply has always exceeded demand in the arts, however, and competition is only a little sharper than the usual dogfights of business and the professions. Wherever we look — Tang China, Republican Rome, Mughal Delhi — we find the literati have promoted and traduced each other in their scramble to the top. Time sorts out reputations, separating the good from the indifferent, and we must remember that if Wang Wei was known throughout China, his greater contemporary Du Fu died destitute and ignored. Literature has always been hard to read, and harder still to assess, and a lifetime's devotion to its intricacies is hardly sufficient to appreciate the better writers in their varied dimensions.
But, you say, but I'm not aspiring to great heights. Something memorable, pleasing and apt is all I intend, just for myself, and my immediate circle of friends. Very well: dispense with theory. Your work will jog along with the great majority, neither original nor necessarily bad. And in the literary world where so much is built on airy hopes and opinions — 75% of US poets never earn anything — there is much to be said for modest realism. {3}
But for those who want to get ahead of the pack? Reviewers play safe, and editors don't write critiques. Workshop conveners do their best, and fellow practitioners are sometimes helpful, but ultimately the judgements will be yours. Only you know, more or less, what you intended. Poems start in odd phrases, an image, a tune in the head, a deeply incoherent pain. How these develop is the poetry. There is nothing difficult in stringing words together, not the backbreaking labour of novel-writing, or the exhaustion of getting actors to stage your play properly. It's in responding to what you have written, feeling it, understanding it, extending its possibilities with imagination, honesty and sensitivity. And that means very fine discriminations. Verbal originality, wide sympathies, generosity of heart and a compassion for the human condition are essential for poetry, but they are nothing without continual exercise and training. Character above all makes an artist, the infinite capacity to be honest and take pains. And those pains constitute criticism, self-criticism, which cannot be evaded. Learn all that you can if you would see your work clearly, with the depth and detachment to understand its effect on others.
Very well: criticism, you say, but not theory. One is practical and is judged on the sense it makes of the poem: how well it explains, illuminates and appraises. The second is aesthetics, a branch of philosophy, an altogether more intellectually strenuously activity. The critic must realize as completely and sensitively as possible whatever is before him on the page. {5} The philosopher aims for generality, consistency and objectivity, drawing his arguments ever tighter to avoid refutation. Even aesthetics, which must serve both masters, finds the combination uncomfortable, and good philosophers are not noticeably good critics, nor the other way round. But unless criticism is content to remain personal preference, an unsupported elaboration of gut feelings, there must be some larger body of understanding, some agreement as to what poetry is and does.
Possibly that understanding will only be secondary to begin with, before analysis feeds through into our responses. Poetry is initially an event, an experience, something arousing delight and approval. We do not conjure up theory as we read or listen. But afterwards we consider, reread, re-enjoy. Theory helps us to map out those responses, think what they amount to. It is surely a common observation that responses are not settled, that appreciation comes slowly, after much effort. Criticism is not a handing down of judgements, but an education in our own responses, of faculties which we need to appraise and extend our own work. And our poems also shift from day to day in our appraisal, until they arrive at what our skills and time cannot materially improve.
But what purpose does theory serve in the immediate present, before we have grown to critical maturity? Perhaps we should call it a book of reference, something resembling those guides to grammar we consult when we're unsure of some expression. Theory will not dissuade us from calling something banal or plodding, but we shall know the grounds of such judgements. And if we reflect further we shall find ourselves asking more searching questions. While everyone wrote in much the same way, as in Augustan England, guiding principles could remain unexamined, but that is not the case today. Widely different views of art and society are canvassed in contemporary literature, and these determine how we respond to what grows increasingly more challenging and specialized.
Radical Theory
Many commentators would disagree. {6} There has been altogether too much theory of late: wildly speculative, politically-motivated, opaque and unhelpful. A bludgeoning style, riddled with non sequiturs and appeals to fashionable gurus, destructive of literature and a good deal else. Perhaps so. Large sections of current literary theory
Perhaps the English Departments, into which radical criticism irrupted in the late sixties and seventies were slow to appreciate the hopes and misunderstandings employed. Perhaps they were not trained, these mild-mannered academics, in the linguistics, psychiatry, politics and aesthetics that now seemed necessary, and they found academic colleagues kept quietly to the other side. But that has changed, and battle lines can now be seen zigzagging between contending parties, most particularly in the Internet resources.
But the rest should not blithely ignore the issue. Radical theory rules in many English departments and in countless literary publications. Unless your productions observe current fads they will be rejected. Most certainly it is not sufficient to study the market and adopt the right dress codes. You will be found out, your slumming despised. Your work must positively reek of the right attitudes if it is to pass beneath the gaze of editorial boards. Cynical advice? Remember that to be published regularly calls for a long and coolly thought-out strategy. Poems have to look right. In poet and poem, first appearances count, and go on counting throughout the selection process.
But there is another reason for attending to theory. Poetry is the workshop of language, the most acute and comprehensive way we have of expressing ourselves. And in poetry the medium is words. Prose may employ ready-made phrases — generally has to, given the needs of a busy world — but poetry works at a deeper level. One essential distinction between poetry and prose — and only one: refer to aesthetics
The exercise needed doing, {9} even if the radical critics who went shopping to continental philosophy came home with indigestible notions. Continental philosophy can be luminously clear, full of insights and imaginative suggestions, but a long training is needed for sensible use. The radical critics cut corners: concepts were snatched at, names dropped, and the whole wrapped up in a worse-than-academic style. Perhaps they more lost themselves in these dense verbal thickets, but the radical critics were not wrong in their basic intuitions. Language is an important matter, and deserves the writer's continued study. Certainly the radical critics erred in their choice of champions — psychiatry, semiotics, Structuralism, Post-structuralism and Marxism — but the exploration is valuable if conducted properly. Rhetoric, hermeneutics, metaphor theory, depth psychology, brain functioning and cognitive science do give back a key role to writers, though it is one where they must stop playing God, and assume more mundane and human activities.
What these new approaches offer can be seen here. A Summing Up concentrates on the approaches that survive scrutiny. The Criticism sections show the theories in operation. Nonetheless, there remain two traditional, perhaps inveterate, resistances to theory. One argues that literary theory is unnecessary, ineffective, restrictive and reductive. The second contends that theory has done more harm than good to twentieth century literary criticism. To these we now turn.
Theory is Unnecessary
Writing is a craft learnt by emulation and practice. {10} And in the harsh world of commercial publishing, novels, guides, biographies and feature articles make their way on their perceived merits, not on underlying theory. Indeed something showing its stitching can only be maladroit or unfinished.
That does not mean that theory was irrelevant or unhelpful. Theory at its most basic, those practical maxims that writers carry in their heads — maintain the viewpoint, shun cliché, employ the active tense — are applications of the aesthetic demands for pleasing shape and emotive appeal.
No doubt theory has its limits. Five minutes of practical demonstration may be worth an hour of written instructions, and there are many areas of everyday skill — tasting of food, riding a bicycle — where language is particular limited. {11} But that shortcoming is with language rather than with theory, and if theory is no better than the language it employs, it need not be worse.
But theory must nonetheless make sense in its own terms — i.e. must not only explain the "facts" but combine those explanations into a larger, autonomous and self-referencing whole. Of course there are dangers in such a coherence
Theory is Ineffectual
But not only is theory unnecessary, it is argued, but ineffectual. See how many theories have gone their way, and yet the giants of literature — Homer, Kalidasa, Du Fu, Rumi, Shakespeare — bask unmolested on the peaks of Parnassus. On the contemporary scene there may be junketings of the literary stockmarket, but the canon of English literature remains largely the same. New techniques and theories may radically change the scientific disciplines — undoubtedly do: witness the electron microscope or plate tectonics — but theory in the arts has no such power.
Is that true? Past writers do not enjoy their reputations regardless, but through the various schools of criticism. The theories were no doubt incomplete but gave novel perspectives and insights, which we inherit. Often a writer's stature was by no means apparent to contemporaries. Success, popularity, giving the age what it demanded — yes, but the public is ever fickle and most writers went through periods of neglect or opprobrium. Appreciation grows as work is read and discussed, and the terminology of that discussion is theory, something additional to the work. We read not to rank but to enjoy, and to understand our own lives a little better. {12} That we do recognize the defining elements in great writing is testimony to our ability to abstract, generalize, derive ideas and concepts — in short to make theories and test them.
Theory is a Diversion
We first strive to understand a poem, then ask ourselves what is good, what is bad, and why. But all too often, in books, journal and magazine articles, a rather circular argument appears. The poem was written by an author of importance. We know that because literary theory has asserted so. Important authors write important poems. We can therefore dispense with evaluative analysis of the poem in question, and simply display our erudition by showing how the poem conforms to certain tenets of contemporary theory. In fact, we'd be wise to dispense with criticism, since Professors X, Y and Z have staked their reputation on the writer's importance, and we shall need the favourable opinion of them, and of the literary community at large, if we are to advance in our academic careers.
Much of that is surely inevitable, and contemporary journals naturally look for contemporary viewpoints. But theories still need to be tested, to prove that do indeed explain properly why we like certain aspects of a poem. We need to see a. that the theory explains our liking better than do other theories, b. that the theory fully explains that liking, and c. that all aspects of the poem's quality are explained by the theory. If the theory fails in these respects, then any decently critical approach requires that we start probing and modifying the theory. Repeated testing, and not appeal to authorities, is what makes theory reliable.
Theory is Reductive
But a more general objection is urged. Theory is pernicious, a generalization from actual works of literature, and therefore reductive. {13} Determine what is common to the very different tragedies of Sophocles, Shakespeare and Racine, and we shall have a very meagre yardstick with which to measure the work of other playwrights. And we shall miss the ways these masters reflected and transcended the genre and expectations of their times.
Of course. But theory is not simple generalization. Newton is not honoured for observing that objects invariably fell to earth but by intuiting and then substantiating his general laws of motion — laws which were far from obvious but which linked and explained the most diverse of phenomena. Traditionally, science is a search for invariable relations and regularities that appear when phenomena are studied by the procedures laid down by the relevant community. Perhaps there is now a realization that the reductive approach works badly for social and biological behaviour. But whatever theories may represent, they operate on a level different from the phenomena they explain, and are subject to different requirements: to coherence, explanatory power, comprehensiveness, simplicity and elegance.
Literature is not science. We do not seek in literary theory the replicable results of scientific experiment, nor expect its clinching predictions. But we do want illumination, a view deeper and more comprehensive than before. And as for definition, which is a separate requirement, the difficulties of precise and unambiguous specification were long ago considered by Wittgenstein's theory of games. If we intuit greatness in Shakespeare, it is literary theory that provides that intuition with its wider habitation and a name. Theory crystallizes, develops and tests that intuition on a broader stage.
Theory is Restrictive
Can we be blinkered by theory, refusing to recognize excellence because current theory supplies no suitable criteria for judgment? Undoubtedly: history is littered with writers neglected in their lifetime who later became important: Leopard, Hopkins, Vallejo, etc. Yet it was not theory as such that delayed recognition, but a narrow provincialism of taste, the very thing that theory with its wider viewpoints seeks to overcome.
Perhaps theory does not possess such liberality and tolerance, but is coercive and possessive? So contend the irrationalists. Paul Feyerabend argued that true science was being stifled by the scientific establishment, an institution as self-serving and undemocratic as the medieval Christian Church. Barthes argued on Marxist lines that ideology created meaning. Foucault saw language as an instrument of state repression.
Some evidence was provided, more by way of illustration than proof perhaps. And certainly science polices its communities, their practices and their habits of belief. The objectivity of the scientific paper is a deception, a rhetoric employed to publicize personal achievement under the guise of selfless furtherance of knowledge. But then language is a complex web of semantic interactions in which there is no sharp distinction between the individual and public or between the literal and the metaphoric. {14}
Additionally, and very importantly, however, language is a social construction, and a collective representation, so that discrepancies between the real and imagined soon crop up, a point John Davidson used to validate his very different theory of meaning. Do such discrepancies appear? Not to any obvious extent. So what remains to the irrationalists? We all suffer, they suppose, from the collective and sustained delusions that psychoanalysts claim to understand and cure. And the evidence for such delusions? None; there can't be, as the ever cunning superego removes all knowledge of our sickness. Well then: we turn to the cures of psychoanalysis, and find them equally nonexistent. {15}
Criticism Misled
So to the second group of arguments, that literary criticism has been distracted from its proper job by an over-reliance on critical theory. Is this so? Probably yes, but with this proviso. It is not theory per se that led criticism astray, but the wrong theories. Many scholars pointed out shortcomings with earlier theories of literature, but there were few attempts to build better. Humanism with its inherent belief in the perfectibility of man, New Criticism with its simplistic psychology, Structuralism with its mathematical analogies between literature and society, semiotics which misread its originator, Poststructuralists with theories contrary to common sense and the authorities quoted — surely these should have been overturned? Perhaps it was academic caution, the realization that no profit was to be had in fishing these troubled waters. Or the increasing specialization in university life that kept scholars on the narrow escalators of their careers.
Yet perfectly sensible theory has been available throughout the twentieth century. Aesthetics is not easy reading, nor much developed in Anglo-American schools of philosophy, but literary scholars might well have gone back to the philosophers from whom Coleridge drew his inspiration. They might have read Collingwood or Dewey or Cassirer. Or they might simply have asked themselves what spiritual or practical or ethical good was conferred by the award of a degree in English Literature.
Conclusions: Place of Theory
What conclusion can we reach, reviewing the vagaries of theory and criticism of the last century? How can these notes possibly help in the writing of poetry?
In these ways:
1. Theory requires us to look at the larger picture. Had literature been approached with some grounding in aesthetics, some realization that expression, purpose, fidelity to life, and formal aspects all had their part of play, we might have had poets prepared to go out and write cogently on matters of deep and lasting importance. It is at least to the credit of radical criticism that it took seriously, and still takes seriously, the philosophical issues involved.
2. Though much contemporary theory serves only to perplex and discourage the contemporary writer, there are important questions raised. Hence the Theory section, which provide material to critically assess, to separate the plausible from the bogus, and to put down intellectual roots.
3. The subjects which current literary theory claims to oversee are fascinating domains in their own right. Their study enriches, deepens and invigorates our understanding of the world. Writing which remains in ignorance of larger issues condemns itself to provincialism, neither interesting to the present age or those to come. No doubt the subjects touched upon are too complex to be digested in their entirety, but these notes may enable the reader to understand the basic issues in the increasing amount of material becoming available on the Internet.
4. Indeed, far from inhibiting expression, a true understanding of theory is an immensely liberating experience. Rules all have some basis in theory, which the writer must understand to escape from blind conformity.
5. Theory can also be the means to better writing. Whatever the beginner supposes, his ideas and outlooks come from somewhere, and the self-evident is usually the shallow and unexamined public mind. Humanism was inspiring but did not stoop to verification. Radical theory is closer to contemporary realities, but is often shabby in detail. Both can be brought into hermeneutics and a deeper view of human functioning that science is now developing. What we understand of ourselves, and the world, is what we write about, and that understanding in the end needs outlooks, world-views and philosophies. At its very least, theory serves as a prophylactic against the preposterous and stultifying, and may provide something of the unifying inspiration that artists seek in their work.
But not only artists. We are all social creatures. Communication, so necessary and instinctive to us, can be done well or badly, so that inescapably art enters into all human activities. Many attempts have been made this century to identify the distinguishing features that separate art from non-art, poetry from prose, the authentic from the secondhand. They have failed. Art is too various and pervasive to be compartmentalized.
That is no argument against standards, however, or reason for not doing well what is anyway inescapable. No doubt that calls for many human qualities, and will involve our human frailties, individual and communal. Yet imagination is not a private indulgence but an inheritance with demands and responsibilities through which we learn the geography of our common home.
POETRY RESOURCES
An enormous quantity of poetry, literary criticism and theory, and much else besides is now available on the Internet, and new sites appear by the week, many of them excellent. Even more staggering is the growth in non-English and non-European language sites, which is surely to be welcomed. Literary ezines also appear like overnight mushrooms, disappearing just as fast. Keeping up with such phenomenal activity is not easy, and many academic sites have given up trying, arguing that the better work is still in printed form.
I think that is true, but only for the moment. When the new generation of ebook readers finally arrive, most of what is carried at great cost and inconvenience in major libraries will move online, a boon not only to scholarship but immensely important to education in the Third World. Even the 3,000-odd small presses should benefit, of which only a few currently have more than token Internet representation. Some have disdained Internet representation altogether, and continue to assert an avant garde status in a seventies magazine style, guaranteeing that circulations stay in the low hundreds, and finances a recurring nightmare.
All that will change as readers demand value for money. Marketing has become enormously sophisticated — I am writing now as the Editor of a well-known site for online selling — and some very sharp minds in large corporations are figuring out how content can be turned into ready cash. Believe them when they say it will be done. Even now it's practically impossible to get a good listing in the major search engines unless your site is astonishingly good, or you are prepared to pay, and pay handsomely.
How does all this affect the resource listings here? Only that you should take advantage of a service that is already under threat. I don't have the time to maintain these 2,800 listings by more than automated link checkers at intervals of a few months, and would ask you let me know when your site address changes, or you come across something of interest in your own browsing.
Poetry Online
On this page are listed directories of poetry magazines and ezines, popular (amateur) poetry sites, sites for mainstream British and American poetry, for foreign poetry, for sites with audio and multimedia, and sites announcing poetry readings. Poetry ezines per se are not listed, and the small presses have their own page (see below). Please don't ask me to list your own poetry site or ezine — there are just too many to do this properly — but submit to the directories that do maintain such listings.
Poetry Resources
Poetry is also an intellectual activity, and calls on a great deal of material. On the poetry resources page is to be found general writer's resources, online libraries and dictionaries, guides to style, rhetoric and grammar, plus leading sites for philosophy, literary theory and criticism, poetry teaching, book news, poetry publishers and publishing advice, legal matters, electronic publishing, website hosting and access by subscription libraries.
Workshops
Your local writing circle or community centre will be your first port of call, but this lists on- and off-line poetry workshops, Internet bulletin Boards and individual critiquing or tutorial services.
Bibliography
Books and printed sources cited in the text are listed some eight hundred in all.
© C. John Holcombe 2007. Material can be freely used for non-commercial purposes if cited in the usual way.
I think that is true, but only for the moment. When the new generation of ebook readers finally arrive, most of what is carried at great cost and inconvenience in major libraries will move online, a boon not only to scholarship but immensely important to education in the Third World. Even the 3,000-odd small presses should benefit, of which only a few currently have more than token Internet representation. Some have disdained Internet representation altogether, and continue to assert an avant garde status in a seventies magazine style, guaranteeing that circulations stay in the low hundreds, and finances a recurring nightmare.
All that will change as readers demand value for money. Marketing has become enormously sophisticated — I am writing now as the Editor of a well-known site for online selling — and some very sharp minds in large corporations are figuring out how content can be turned into ready cash. Believe them when they say it will be done. Even now it's practically impossible to get a good listing in the major search engines unless your site is astonishingly good, or you are prepared to pay, and pay handsomely.
How does all this affect the resource listings here? Only that you should take advantage of a service that is already under threat. I don't have the time to maintain these 2,800 listings by more than automated link checkers at intervals of a few months, and would ask you let me know when your site address changes, or you come across something of interest in your own browsing.
Poetry Online
On this page are listed directories of poetry magazines and ezines, popular (amateur) poetry sites, sites for mainstream British and American poetry, for foreign poetry, for sites with audio and multimedia, and sites announcing poetry readings. Poetry ezines per se are not listed, and the small presses have their own page (see below). Please don't ask me to list your own poetry site or ezine — there are just too many to do this properly — but submit to the directories that do maintain such listings.
Poetry Resources
Poetry is also an intellectual activity, and calls on a great deal of material. On the poetry resources page is to be found general writer's resources, online libraries and dictionaries, guides to style, rhetoric and grammar, plus leading sites for philosophy, literary theory and criticism, poetry teaching, book news, poetry publishers and publishing advice, legal matters, electronic publishing, website hosting and access by subscription libraries.
Workshops
Your local writing circle or community centre will be your first port of call, but this lists on- and off-line poetry workshops, Internet bulletin Boards and individual critiquing or tutorial services.
Bibliography
Books and printed sources cited in the text are listed some eight hundred in all.
© C. John Holcombe 2007. Material can be freely used for non-commercial purposes if cited in the usual way.
TRADITIONAL POETRY
Introduction
Poets and workshop conveners dread the question, but it can hardly be avoided. What exactly is poetry? Dictionaries generally offer something like: the expression or embodiment of beautiful or elevated thought, imagination or feeling in language adapted to stir the imagination and the emotions.
But if this expresses the expectations of the man in the street, it doesn't describe the aims of most poets working today, nor take us far in appreciating the variety of past work.
Traditional Poetry
Traditionalists generally believe that poems give enduring and universal life to what was merely transitory and particular. Through them, the poet expresses his vision, real or imaginative, and he does so in forms that are intelligible and pleasurable to others, and likely to arouse emotions akin to his own. Poetry is language organized for aesthetic purposes. Whatever else it does, poetry must bear witness, must fulfill the cry: 'let not my heart forget what mine eyes have seen.' A poem is distinguished by the feeling that dictates it and that which it communicates, by the economy and resonance of its language, and by the imaginative power that integrates, intensifies and enhances experience. Poems bear some relationship to real life but are equally autonomous and independent entities that contain within themselves the reason why they are so and not otherwise. Unlike discourse, which proceeds by logical steps, poetry is intuited whole as a presentiment of thought and/or feeling. Workaday prose is an abbreviation of reality: poetry is its intensification. Poems have a transcendental quality: there is a sudden transformation through which words assume a particular importance. Like a bar of music, or a small element in a holographic image, a phrase in a poem has the power to immediately call up whole ranges of possibilities and expectations. Art is a way of knowing, and is valuable in proportion to the justice with which it evaluates that knowledge. Poetry is an embodiment of human values, not a kind of syntax. True symbolism in poetry allows the particular to represent the more general, not as a dream or shadow, but as the momentary, living revelation of the inscrutable.
The poet's task is to resurrect the outer, transient and perishable world within himself, to transform it into something much more real. He must recognize pattern wherever he sees it, and build his perceptions into poetic form that has the coherence and urgency to persuade us of its truth: the intellectual has to be fused with the sensuous meaning. All poets borrow, but where good poets improve on their borrowing, the bad debase. The greatness of the poet is measurable by the real significance of the resemblances on which he builds, the depth of the roots in the constitution, if not of the physical world, then of the moral and emotional nature of man.
Poetry can be verse or prose. Verse has a strong metrical element. An inner music is the soul of poetry. Poetry withers and dries out when it leaves music, or at least some imagined music, too far behind. The diction of poetry is a fiction, neither that of the speaker nor the audience. Without its contrivance poetry is still possible, but is immensely poorer. Subtly the vocabulary of poetry changes with the period, but words too familiar or too remote defeat purpose of the poet. {1}
Poets and workshop conveners dread the question, but it can hardly be avoided. What exactly is poetry? Dictionaries generally offer something like: the expression or embodiment of beautiful or elevated thought, imagination or feeling in language adapted to stir the imagination and the emotions.
But if this expresses the expectations of the man in the street, it doesn't describe the aims of most poets working today, nor take us far in appreciating the variety of past work.
Traditional Poetry
Traditionalists generally believe that poems give enduring and universal life to what was merely transitory and particular. Through them, the poet expresses his vision, real or imaginative, and he does so in forms that are intelligible and pleasurable to others, and likely to arouse emotions akin to his own. Poetry is language organized for aesthetic purposes. Whatever else it does, poetry must bear witness, must fulfill the cry: 'let not my heart forget what mine eyes have seen.' A poem is distinguished by the feeling that dictates it and that which it communicates, by the economy and resonance of its language, and by the imaginative power that integrates, intensifies and enhances experience. Poems bear some relationship to real life but are equally autonomous and independent entities that contain within themselves the reason why they are so and not otherwise. Unlike discourse, which proceeds by logical steps, poetry is intuited whole as a presentiment of thought and/or feeling. Workaday prose is an abbreviation of reality: poetry is its intensification. Poems have a transcendental quality: there is a sudden transformation through which words assume a particular importance. Like a bar of music, or a small element in a holographic image, a phrase in a poem has the power to immediately call up whole ranges of possibilities and expectations. Art is a way of knowing, and is valuable in proportion to the justice with which it evaluates that knowledge. Poetry is an embodiment of human values, not a kind of syntax. True symbolism in poetry allows the particular to represent the more general, not as a dream or shadow, but as the momentary, living revelation of the inscrutable.
The poet's task is to resurrect the outer, transient and perishable world within himself, to transform it into something much more real. He must recognize pattern wherever he sees it, and build his perceptions into poetic form that has the coherence and urgency to persuade us of its truth: the intellectual has to be fused with the sensuous meaning. All poets borrow, but where good poets improve on their borrowing, the bad debase. The greatness of the poet is measurable by the real significance of the resemblances on which he builds, the depth of the roots in the constitution, if not of the physical world, then of the moral and emotional nature of man.
Poetry can be verse or prose. Verse has a strong metrical element. An inner music is the soul of poetry. Poetry withers and dries out when it leaves music, or at least some imagined music, too far behind. The diction of poetry is a fiction, neither that of the speaker nor the audience. Without its contrivance poetry is still possible, but is immensely poorer. Subtly the vocabulary of poetry changes with the period, but words too familiar or too remote defeat purpose of the poet. {1}
Understanding Literary Archetypes
Archetypal analysis of a work is one of the most common forms of literary analysis. It is easy to understand and use with a little knowledge of the basics.
First of all, an archetype is a pattern from which copies can be made. That is, it is a universal theme that manifests itself differently on an individual basis. Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung believed that these archetypes were the result of a collective unconscious. This collective unconscious was not directly knowable and is a product of the shared experiences of our ancestors. Jung believed it was:
Primordial: That is, we, as individuals, have these archetypal images ingrained in our understanding even before we are born.
Universal: These archetypes can be found all over the world and throughout history. The manifestation of the idea may be different, but the idea itself is the same.
Archetypes fall into two major categories: characters, situations/symbols. It is easiest to understand them with the help of examples. Listed below are some of the most common archetypes in each category.
Characters:
1. The hero - The courageous figure, the one who's always running in and saving the day. Example: Dartagnon from Alexandre Dumas's "The Three Musketeers"
2. The outcast - The outcast is just that. He or she has been cast out of society or has left it on a voluntary basis. The outcast figure can oftentimes also be considered as a Christ figure. Example: Simon from William Golding's "The Lord of the Flies"
3. The scapegoat - The scapegoat figure is the one who gets blamed for everything, regardless of whether he or she is actually at fault. Example: Snowball from George Orwell's "Animal Farm"
4. The star-crossed lovers - This is the young couple joined by love but unexpectedly parted by fate. Example: Romeo and Juliet from William Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet"
5. The shrew - This is that nagging, bothersome wife always battering her husband with verbal abuse. Example: Zeena from Edith Wharton's "Ethan Frome"
Situations/symbols:
• The task - A situation in which a character, or group of characters, is driven to complete some duty of monstrous proportion. Example: Frodo's task to keep the ring safe in J. R. R. Tolkein's "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy
• The quest - Here, the character(s) are searching for something, whether consciously or unconsciously. Their actions, thoughts, and feelings center around the goal fo completing this quest. Example: Christian's quest for salvation in John Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress"
• The loss of innocence - This is, as the name implies, a loss of innocence through sexual experience, violence, or any other means. Example: Val's loss of innocence after settling down at the mercantile store in Tennessee William's "Orpheus Descending"
• The initiation - This is the process by which a character is brought into another sphere of influence, usually (in literature) into adulthood. Example: Ayla's initiation both into the Clan and into adulthood in Jean Auel's "The Clan of the Cave Bear"
• Water - Water is a symbol of life, cleansing, and rebirth. It is a strong life force, and is often depicted as a living, reasoning force. Example: Edna learns to swim in Kate Chopin's "The Awakening"
Hopefully, you will now be able to recognize and understand archetypes as you come across them in your readings. They help to add depth and underlying significance to some of the world's best literature.
First of all, an archetype is a pattern from which copies can be made. That is, it is a universal theme that manifests itself differently on an individual basis. Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung believed that these archetypes were the result of a collective unconscious. This collective unconscious was not directly knowable and is a product of the shared experiences of our ancestors. Jung believed it was:
Primordial: That is, we, as individuals, have these archetypal images ingrained in our understanding even before we are born.
Universal: These archetypes can be found all over the world and throughout history. The manifestation of the idea may be different, but the idea itself is the same.
Archetypes fall into two major categories: characters, situations/symbols. It is easiest to understand them with the help of examples. Listed below are some of the most common archetypes in each category.
Characters:
1. The hero - The courageous figure, the one who's always running in and saving the day. Example: Dartagnon from Alexandre Dumas's "The Three Musketeers"
2. The outcast - The outcast is just that. He or she has been cast out of society or has left it on a voluntary basis. The outcast figure can oftentimes also be considered as a Christ figure. Example: Simon from William Golding's "The Lord of the Flies"
3. The scapegoat - The scapegoat figure is the one who gets blamed for everything, regardless of whether he or she is actually at fault. Example: Snowball from George Orwell's "Animal Farm"
4. The star-crossed lovers - This is the young couple joined by love but unexpectedly parted by fate. Example: Romeo and Juliet from William Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet"
5. The shrew - This is that nagging, bothersome wife always battering her husband with verbal abuse. Example: Zeena from Edith Wharton's "Ethan Frome"
Situations/symbols:
• The task - A situation in which a character, or group of characters, is driven to complete some duty of monstrous proportion. Example: Frodo's task to keep the ring safe in J. R. R. Tolkein's "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy
• The quest - Here, the character(s) are searching for something, whether consciously or unconsciously. Their actions, thoughts, and feelings center around the goal fo completing this quest. Example: Christian's quest for salvation in John Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress"
• The loss of innocence - This is, as the name implies, a loss of innocence through sexual experience, violence, or any other means. Example: Val's loss of innocence after settling down at the mercantile store in Tennessee William's "Orpheus Descending"
• The initiation - This is the process by which a character is brought into another sphere of influence, usually (in literature) into adulthood. Example: Ayla's initiation both into the Clan and into adulthood in Jean Auel's "The Clan of the Cave Bear"
• Water - Water is a symbol of life, cleansing, and rebirth. It is a strong life force, and is often depicted as a living, reasoning force. Example: Edna learns to swim in Kate Chopin's "The Awakening"
Hopefully, you will now be able to recognize and understand archetypes as you come across them in your readings. They help to add depth and underlying significance to some of the world's best literature.
Poetry
This article is about the art form. For the magazine, see Poetry (magazine).
Poetry (from the Greek "ποίησις", poiesis, a "making") is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning. Poetry may be written independently, as discrete poems, or may occur in conjunction with other arts, as in poetic drama, hymns or lyrics.
Poetry, and discussions of it, has a long history. Early attempts to define poetry, such as Aristotle's Poetics, focused on the uses of speech in rhetoric, drama, song and comedy.[1] Later attempts concentrated on features such as repetition, verse form and rhyme, and emphasized the aesthetics which distinguish poetry from prose.[2] From the mid-20th century, poetry has sometimes been more loosely defined as a fundamental creative act using language.[3]
Poetry often uses particular forms and conventions to expand the literal meaning of the words, or to evoke emotional or sensual responses. Devices such as assonance, alliteration, onomatopoeia and rhythm are sometimes used to achieve musical or incantatory effects. Poetry's use of ambiguity, symbolism, irony and other stylistic elements of poetic diction often leaves a poem open to multiple interpretations. Similarly, metaphor and simile create a resonance between otherwise disparate images—a layering of meanings, forming connections previously not perceived. Kindred forms of resonance may exist, between individual verses, in their patterns of rhyme or rhythm.
Some forms of poetry are specific to particular cultures and genres, responding to the characteristics of the language in which the poet writes. While readers accustomed to identifying poetry with Dante, Goethe, Mickiewicz and Rumi may think of it as being written in rhyming lines and regular meter, there are traditions, such as those of Du Fu and Beowulf, that use other approaches to achieve rhythm and euphony. In today's globalized world, poets often borrow styles, techniques and forms from diverse cultures and languages.
Poetry (from the Greek "ποίησις", poiesis, a "making") is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning. Poetry may be written independently, as discrete poems, or may occur in conjunction with other arts, as in poetic drama, hymns or lyrics.
Poetry, and discussions of it, has a long history. Early attempts to define poetry, such as Aristotle's Poetics, focused on the uses of speech in rhetoric, drama, song and comedy.[1] Later attempts concentrated on features such as repetition, verse form and rhyme, and emphasized the aesthetics which distinguish poetry from prose.[2] From the mid-20th century, poetry has sometimes been more loosely defined as a fundamental creative act using language.[3]
Poetry often uses particular forms and conventions to expand the literal meaning of the words, or to evoke emotional or sensual responses. Devices such as assonance, alliteration, onomatopoeia and rhythm are sometimes used to achieve musical or incantatory effects. Poetry's use of ambiguity, symbolism, irony and other stylistic elements of poetic diction often leaves a poem open to multiple interpretations. Similarly, metaphor and simile create a resonance between otherwise disparate images—a layering of meanings, forming connections previously not perceived. Kindred forms of resonance may exist, between individual verses, in their patterns of rhyme or rhythm.
Some forms of poetry are specific to particular cultures and genres, responding to the characteristics of the language in which the poet writes. While readers accustomed to identifying poetry with Dante, Goethe, Mickiewicz and Rumi may think of it as being written in rhyming lines and regular meter, there are traditions, such as those of Du Fu and Beowulf, that use other approaches to achieve rhythm and euphony. In today's globalized world, poets often borrow styles, techniques and forms from diverse cultures and languages.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Tip Sheet on: Poetry Analysis
Poetry has many of the same elements as fiction: theme, narrator, setting, and characters. However poetry concentrates its elements in fewer words. Poets choose the words that they use very carefully. They delight in using figurative language, rhyme, imagery, and vocabulary that has more than one meaning.
Before focusing on specific poetic elements, here are a few steps to help acquaint you with the poem:
1. Look at the poem – are there any striking characteristics about the way it is set up? Do the lines/stanzas have a pattern?
2. Read the poem out loud – take note of the way it sounds. Does it have a certain rhythm to it?
3. After reading the poem and obtaining a general idea of what it is about, look at the title. How does the title relate to the poem?
Now it is time to analyze the five different components of the poem, (1) the speaker, (2) the structure, (3) the meaning, (4) the imagery and (5) the rhythm, meter and rhyme scheme.
Speaker
Understanding the Speaker is an essential component of poetry analysis. When looking at a poem, ask yourself the following questions:
1. Who is the speaker? Is it a male or female? An object? An historical figure?
2. To whom or what are they speaking? Is the speaker talking about someone? About the past? Present? Future?
3. What is the speaker’s tone? What is the speaker’s mood and how is it created? Is the poet reflective? Happy? Angry?
Structure
Examine the way the poem looks and is presented on the page.
1. How is the poem set up? Is it separated in to stanzas? Does it follow the pattern of one of the closed forms, such as sonnet, limerick, or haiku?
2. Is the poem in free verse?
3. How are the lines set up? Is there one word per line? Is the poem one continuous sentence?
4. How does the structure of the poem contribute to meaning?
Meaning
Now that you’ve determined the speaker and noted any special qualities about structure, read the poem for meaning.
1. As you’re reading, note any words that you do not know. After you’ve finished reading the poem, look these words up in a dictionary. This is important because poets choose each word on purpose, not only for its sound, but for the nuance of meaning or multiplicity or meanings a particular word has.
2. After you’ve looked up unfamiliar words, read the poem again as a whole. Try to determine the main idea of the poem - feel free to paraphrase in your own words.
3. You may want to treat the poem as a puzzle: First figure out the meaning of the first line in the first stanza, then the meaning of the second and so on. At the end of the stanza, figure out how the lines work together to create meaning. Jot this down and continue to do the same for the next stanza. After you have mini-summaries for each stanza, put them together to determine the larger meaning of the poem as a whole.
Imagery Not only do the words in a poem create a physical image on the page, but in their meaning and connection, they convey images to the reader.
1. The easiest images to pick out are similes and metaphors.
2. Look for words that reflect the five senses. Are there phrases and words that create a picture, sound, taste, feeling or smell in your mind? Are words used such as buzz or cuckoo (onomatopoeia) which imitates what they name?
3. Look for the repetition of colors, sounds, images, or specific sensory words. Repetition of certain words creates meaning and puts importance on those words that are repeated.
Rhythm, Meter and Rhyme Scheme The most effective way to find rhythm, meter and rhyme in a poem is to read it out loud.
1. Rhythm is the recurrence of stressed and unstressed sounds. Depending on
how the words are arranged in a poem, it can sound melodic or discordant,
fast or slow, etc. Rhythm’s what gives some poems their “sing-song” quality.
A recurring pattern of rhythm is called meter.
2. The rhyme scheme of a poem describes the pattern of end rhymes. Rhyme
schemes are mapped out by noting patterns of rhyme with small letters: the
first rhyme sound is designated a, the second b, the third c, and so on.
By the time you have read the poem six or seven times, and identified all the parts, you should be able to come to some basic conclusions. “Oftentimes the point will be a complex thing—a tension of forces between potentially opposed moods or images or ideas…A really good analysis covers the whole poem, uniting all its parts” (Padgett).
Before focusing on specific poetic elements, here are a few steps to help acquaint you with the poem:
1. Look at the poem – are there any striking characteristics about the way it is set up? Do the lines/stanzas have a pattern?
2. Read the poem out loud – take note of the way it sounds. Does it have a certain rhythm to it?
3. After reading the poem and obtaining a general idea of what it is about, look at the title. How does the title relate to the poem?
Now it is time to analyze the five different components of the poem, (1) the speaker, (2) the structure, (3) the meaning, (4) the imagery and (5) the rhythm, meter and rhyme scheme.
Speaker
Understanding the Speaker is an essential component of poetry analysis. When looking at a poem, ask yourself the following questions:
1. Who is the speaker? Is it a male or female? An object? An historical figure?
2. To whom or what are they speaking? Is the speaker talking about someone? About the past? Present? Future?
3. What is the speaker’s tone? What is the speaker’s mood and how is it created? Is the poet reflective? Happy? Angry?
Structure
Examine the way the poem looks and is presented on the page.
1. How is the poem set up? Is it separated in to stanzas? Does it follow the pattern of one of the closed forms, such as sonnet, limerick, or haiku?
2. Is the poem in free verse?
3. How are the lines set up? Is there one word per line? Is the poem one continuous sentence?
4. How does the structure of the poem contribute to meaning?
Meaning
Now that you’ve determined the speaker and noted any special qualities about structure, read the poem for meaning.
1. As you’re reading, note any words that you do not know. After you’ve finished reading the poem, look these words up in a dictionary. This is important because poets choose each word on purpose, not only for its sound, but for the nuance of meaning or multiplicity or meanings a particular word has.
2. After you’ve looked up unfamiliar words, read the poem again as a whole. Try to determine the main idea of the poem - feel free to paraphrase in your own words.
3. You may want to treat the poem as a puzzle: First figure out the meaning of the first line in the first stanza, then the meaning of the second and so on. At the end of the stanza, figure out how the lines work together to create meaning. Jot this down and continue to do the same for the next stanza. After you have mini-summaries for each stanza, put them together to determine the larger meaning of the poem as a whole.
Imagery Not only do the words in a poem create a physical image on the page, but in their meaning and connection, they convey images to the reader.
1. The easiest images to pick out are similes and metaphors.
2. Look for words that reflect the five senses. Are there phrases and words that create a picture, sound, taste, feeling or smell in your mind? Are words used such as buzz or cuckoo (onomatopoeia) which imitates what they name?
3. Look for the repetition of colors, sounds, images, or specific sensory words. Repetition of certain words creates meaning and puts importance on those words that are repeated.
Rhythm, Meter and Rhyme Scheme The most effective way to find rhythm, meter and rhyme in a poem is to read it out loud.
1. Rhythm is the recurrence of stressed and unstressed sounds. Depending on
how the words are arranged in a poem, it can sound melodic or discordant,
fast or slow, etc. Rhythm’s what gives some poems their “sing-song” quality.
A recurring pattern of rhythm is called meter.
2. The rhyme scheme of a poem describes the pattern of end rhymes. Rhyme
schemes are mapped out by noting patterns of rhyme with small letters: the
first rhyme sound is designated a, the second b, the third c, and so on.
By the time you have read the poem six or seven times, and identified all the parts, you should be able to come to some basic conclusions. “Oftentimes the point will be a complex thing—a tension of forces between potentially opposed moods or images or ideas…A really good analysis covers the whole poem, uniting all its parts” (Padgett).
Types of Poetry: A World-Class Virtual Encyclopedia
Has anyone ever asked you, "What types of poetry do you write?"
What people generally mean by “types of poetry” is “What particular poetic forms do you employ?” or “What is the subject matter you explore?” They may really be asking you to describe your poetry in some kind of terms they may understand from their high school English classes.
These questions are difficult to answer if you do not understand the different types of poetry on the market (and many people, particularly the uninitiated, don’t).
Nevertheless, learning different techniques can be a lot of fun. And the study of the different types of poetry is an excellent way to become familiar with the history of poetry, with individual poets with whom we may not be familiar - or that we admire - and a great way to improve on our own craft.
Of course, types of poetry are determined by several key factors. We’ll refer to them as elements:
The elements of poetry are form, style, tone, philosophy, school (aka movement) and subject matter.
The elements of poetry: Form, Style and Tone
Versus Philosophy, School and Subject Matter
The first element, form, is the particular genre of poetry, or category, the poem may fall into. For instance, sonnet, haiku, cinquain, sestina, villanelle and ballade are all different forms of poetry. However, there are many more.
Click one of the links below to learn more about that poetry form:
Sonnet
Ars Poetica
Haiku
Ballade
Kyrielle
Style and tone have to do with the individual uniqueness of every poet and, many times, individual poems. Style refers to how poetry is written using such tools as capitalization, punctuation, line breaks and word choice. Tone has more to do with the overall feeling a poem arouses in its reader.
Is it a sad poem? Or is it funny? Does it evoke feelings of despair or joy? Love or hate? Does it inspire, criticize, and have a sort of mystery to it? All of these questions are answered by the tone of the poem itself.
The elements of poetry vary by individual poem as much as they do by the poets who write them. William Shakespeare wrote in the sonnet form but each of his thousands of sonnets has an individual style and tone that sets it apart from all the others. You can even tell the difference between a Shakespearean Sonnet and the sonnets of other poets who used that form as well – two that come to mind are Petrarch and Edmund Spenser – simply because they each had their own unique style and tone. In other words, the elements set them apart.
Philosophy is another element of poetry that bears mentioning. Every poet, and every poem for that matter, has a particular philosophy underlying it. You may even call it a worldview. It can be religious, secular, romantic, puritan, nihilistic, esoteric or any number of other philosophical schools of thought. But every poet approaches the craft of poetry from a different point of view. Inevitably, that worldview is going to seep in, either intentionally or unintentionally. It’s good to be aware of your particular worldview and exploit it for all it’s worth.
What's more, entire schools or movements may have an underlying philosophy behind them, which makes certain types of poetry difficult to define.
The particular school of poetry, or class, is also important. It could just as well be called movement and is closely related to philosophy but is different from philosophy because poets from different, or even competing, worldviews may belong to the same poetic school or movement.
Follow one of the links below to learn more about each school or movement of poetry:
Harlem Renaissance Poetry
Finally, subject matter is of prime importance in influencing the type of poetry one writes. Are you writing about politics? Love? War? Vengeance? An epic tale of heroism? Or a trivial conversation?
While any form or style of poetry can theoretically be used to write about any subject matter, the type of poetry one does write is closely related to subject matter. The sonnet, for instance, is mostly used to write about love and romance. Allen Ginsberg's "Howl," however, a political rant, addresses another subject altogether and is written in a completely different style and tone.
So, no matter what types of poetry you write, subject matter is at least of some consideration when discussing form, style and tone.
The Chicken or the Egg
Or, Which Came First? Form, Style and Tone, or Subject Matter?
When writing a poem, where do you start?
That’s a good question. Theoretically, you can start anywhere, and different poets have started at different places, even when writing on similar themes. The same poet may even start two different poems from two different beginnings.
You may get an idea for a title first, or you may get the idea for the first line – or any line – and work off of that. You may decide you’d like to write about a feeling you have for a particular person or event, or maybe you want to write about what you witnessed on the way to school one morning.
It really doesn’t matter where you start, but it does matter how you incorporate all of the elements so they work together. Before you can do that, though, you need to study each poetic element on its own to understand how they all fit into the whole.
We invite you on a little journey. Take a step into the World-Class Poetry web universe and embark on a fascinating study of poetry, the types of poetry that have been written down through history and a philosophy of poetics as unique as your grandmother's apple pie.
Poetry Terms
Sign up for our weekly e-zine Hyperbole. Chock full of insights into the best forms, poetry terms, poet bios, poetry book reviews, and other helps to provide poets with the tools necessary to improve their craft and get published.
What people generally mean by “types of poetry” is “What particular poetic forms do you employ?” or “What is the subject matter you explore?” They may really be asking you to describe your poetry in some kind of terms they may understand from their high school English classes.
These questions are difficult to answer if you do not understand the different types of poetry on the market (and many people, particularly the uninitiated, don’t).
Nevertheless, learning different techniques can be a lot of fun. And the study of the different types of poetry is an excellent way to become familiar with the history of poetry, with individual poets with whom we may not be familiar - or that we admire - and a great way to improve on our own craft.
Of course, types of poetry are determined by several key factors. We’ll refer to them as elements:
The elements of poetry are form, style, tone, philosophy, school (aka movement) and subject matter.
The elements of poetry: Form, Style and Tone
Versus Philosophy, School and Subject Matter
The first element, form, is the particular genre of poetry, or category, the poem may fall into. For instance, sonnet, haiku, cinquain, sestina, villanelle and ballade are all different forms of poetry. However, there are many more.
Click one of the links below to learn more about that poetry form:
Sonnet
Ars Poetica
Haiku
Ballade
Kyrielle
Style and tone have to do with the individual uniqueness of every poet and, many times, individual poems. Style refers to how poetry is written using such tools as capitalization, punctuation, line breaks and word choice. Tone has more to do with the overall feeling a poem arouses in its reader.
Is it a sad poem? Or is it funny? Does it evoke feelings of despair or joy? Love or hate? Does it inspire, criticize, and have a sort of mystery to it? All of these questions are answered by the tone of the poem itself.
The elements of poetry vary by individual poem as much as they do by the poets who write them. William Shakespeare wrote in the sonnet form but each of his thousands of sonnets has an individual style and tone that sets it apart from all the others. You can even tell the difference between a Shakespearean Sonnet and the sonnets of other poets who used that form as well – two that come to mind are Petrarch and Edmund Spenser – simply because they each had their own unique style and tone. In other words, the elements set them apart.
Philosophy is another element of poetry that bears mentioning. Every poet, and every poem for that matter, has a particular philosophy underlying it. You may even call it a worldview. It can be religious, secular, romantic, puritan, nihilistic, esoteric or any number of other philosophical schools of thought. But every poet approaches the craft of poetry from a different point of view. Inevitably, that worldview is going to seep in, either intentionally or unintentionally. It’s good to be aware of your particular worldview and exploit it for all it’s worth.
What's more, entire schools or movements may have an underlying philosophy behind them, which makes certain types of poetry difficult to define.
The particular school of poetry, or class, is also important. It could just as well be called movement and is closely related to philosophy but is different from philosophy because poets from different, or even competing, worldviews may belong to the same poetic school or movement.
Follow one of the links below to learn more about each school or movement of poetry:
Harlem Renaissance Poetry
Finally, subject matter is of prime importance in influencing the type of poetry one writes. Are you writing about politics? Love? War? Vengeance? An epic tale of heroism? Or a trivial conversation?
While any form or style of poetry can theoretically be used to write about any subject matter, the type of poetry one does write is closely related to subject matter. The sonnet, for instance, is mostly used to write about love and romance. Allen Ginsberg's "Howl," however, a political rant, addresses another subject altogether and is written in a completely different style and tone.
So, no matter what types of poetry you write, subject matter is at least of some consideration when discussing form, style and tone.
The Chicken or the Egg
Or, Which Came First? Form, Style and Tone, or Subject Matter?
When writing a poem, where do you start?
That’s a good question. Theoretically, you can start anywhere, and different poets have started at different places, even when writing on similar themes. The same poet may even start two different poems from two different beginnings.
You may get an idea for a title first, or you may get the idea for the first line – or any line – and work off of that. You may decide you’d like to write about a feeling you have for a particular person or event, or maybe you want to write about what you witnessed on the way to school one morning.
It really doesn’t matter where you start, but it does matter how you incorporate all of the elements so they work together. Before you can do that, though, you need to study each poetic element on its own to understand how they all fit into the whole.
We invite you on a little journey. Take a step into the World-Class Poetry web universe and embark on a fascinating study of poetry, the types of poetry that have been written down through history and a philosophy of poetics as unique as your grandmother's apple pie.
Poetry Terms
Sign up for our weekly e-zine Hyperbole. Chock full of insights into the best forms, poetry terms, poet bios, poetry book reviews, and other helps to provide poets with the tools necessary to improve their craft and get published.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Welcome
Welcome to my web blog. Here you can discuss or share about literature: short story, poem, novel, etc. In addition, if you need any articles, you can find out here because everyone can copy everything. This blog dedicates to all people who interested with literature, classic and modern. I just want to say "let go literature".
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