Showy vs Telly, abstract vs emotional

[BenJohnson]

I fear it is far too abstract, not related to the personal enough - does poetry always have to express emotion, be personal? -

Ros' comment this morning came hard on the heels of me pausing about to comment that a poem was too telly. Then I thought does it matter if I like, if I like it then it works, doesn't it? To some extent where does the whole showy telly thing begin and end. Dig back far enough and poetry was incredibly telly, I guess the Imagists altered all that. However it is surely a question of readership and style.

To Ros' question I would say that poetry never needs to express emotion at all. Abstract is fine.

Any other thoughts?

[Ros]

Should be an interesting discussion, Ben! My problem is that there are various subjects - future of the universe, for example - which I feel are amazing, moving etc and really should be addressed poetically. And yet it seems so hard to do in a way that is acceptable in modern poetry. I get the impression (probably wrong?) that contemporary poetry always tends to relate things back to the concrete and personal, and that inevitably gets back to emotions.

Anyone have any good examples of more abstract modern poetry? (I mean that addresses abstract subjects in a fairly formal manner, rather than experiemental stuff?)

[BenJohnson]

future of the universe, for example - which I feel are amazing, moving etc and really should be addressed poetically. And yet it seems so hard to do in a way that is acceptable in modern poetry. I get the impression (probably wrong?) that contemporary poetry always tends to relate things back to the concrete and personal, and that inevitably gets back to emotions.

Well if that is the case maybe it is time to move the boundaries.

[David]

I dunno. What is an abstract subject? And what is it about it that makes it abstract? Rather than ... what? Concrete?

I'm a bit vague on me parameters here.

[Ros]

By abstract,here in particular, I'm meaning non-personal stuff that goes beyond our lives - beginning and end of the universe, quantum mechanics, the very small, the very large. I suppose when people complain about abstract poetry generally, they are referring to poems that talk about Love or Memory in non-specific ways.

This is the sort of thing I aspire to, in the scientific sense:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive ... ?id=171997

[Sharra]

I think the problem is if things are too abstract (using Ros's definition), people often can't relate to them. It's not the abstract thing itself thats the issue, but with how the poets allows the reader to enage with that abstraction.

The obviously ways of getting that engagement is by showing how the abstraction interacts with something we can relate to, whether it's the concrete environment, humanity or something else. We need to experience the effects of the abstract in some way - and by definition for us to experience something, emotions have to be involved.

I guess what I'm saying is that the subject matter isn't important, its how it makes us feel. So Ros when you say

the universe, for example - which I feel are amazing, moving etc

- the emotion comes in you sharing that feeling with us, rather than writing about emotion.

If that makes any sense? Abstract stuff tends to mash my brain

Sharra
x

[BenJohnson]

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive ... ?id=171997

That is a good link Ros, she pitches the scientific facts at around about the right level, for me anyway.

[Ros]

engage with the abstraction, good thought Sharra.

[Terreson]

I hope the discussion has not gone moribund. A bunch of years ago A.E. Housman enabled me to effect a paradigm shift when it comes to this perennial debate. I was led to him, and to his famous 1933 lecture at Cambridge, through reading Robert Graves. I wish I could have been there. Report has it that it was an SRO performance with everyone who was anyone in London's literary world in attendance. Some of how he concluded his lecture on poetry went like this:

~Poetry indeed seems to me more physical than intellectual.

~I could no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat, but that I thought we both recognized the object by the symptoms which it provokes in us.

Then he described some of these symptoms. Such as when the hair of his flesh was made to stand up. And a shiver running down the spine. A constriction of the throat and a p[recipitation of water in the eyes. And finally, borrowing from Keats, he mentioned how a poem could go through him like a spear, the sensation of which he felt in the pit of his stomach.

A page later he said

~In short I think that the production of poetry, in its first stage, is less an active than a passive and involuntary process; and if I were obliged, not to define poetry, but to name the class of things to which it belongs, I should call it a secretion; whether a natural secretion, like turpentine in the fir, or a morbid secretion, like the pearl in the oyster.

Anyway, what I take from all of this, and for me at least, is that poetry, at its best, speaks to the whole body, to the whole soma, and not to any specific part, be it the brain or the emotions or to the senses alone. This is my way of getting around the dichotomizing poetry is sometimes prisoner to.

Terreson

[Ros]

But isn't it the case that only a very few poems have that depth of physical reaction? I know a few that I return to that can make me feel like that. But I read lots of others that I consider good or clever poems that never affect me that much. I suppose when they do it's a mixture of a) the poem being good (in terms of technique, etc as we were discussing) and b) it hitting a specific emotional chord with a particular reader.

I'm not sure I've ever written anything that has that effect on a reader! Should I give up?

Ros

[David]

Terreson's post reminds me of this, by the Blessed Emily:

“If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire ever can warm me I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know of.”

But, I feel about that much as Ros does.

[Terreson]

But isn't it the case that only a very few poems have that depth of physical reaction? I know a few that I return to that can make me feel like that. But I read lots of others that I consider good or clever poems that never affect me that much. I suppose when they do it's a mixture of a) the poem being good (in terms of technique, etc as we were discussing) and b) it hitting a specific emotional chord with a particular reader.

I'm not sure I've ever written anything that has that effect on a reader! Should I give up?

Ros

Of course, Ros. It is as you say also. Mind you, I am not offering a definition. And I would be lucky if I have one in a hundred poems that passes the Housman test. It is just what I aim for is all. They say that Dylan Thomas got his big break when an editor (was it for Dutton?) told him he couldn't tell if the stuff amounted to poetry but that for him it passed the Housman test. Story also runs, and speaking of sweet Emily, that her literary contact, Higginson, was never sure if what she made was poetry. Neither was she for that matter. But is there anyone since Dickinson who doesn't acknowledge that she was something like the original mother to us all?

Dave has said you are into the sciences. I am too. And I have more than a few poems that address such things as quantum mechanics, DNA sequencing, the instrumental insemination of honey bee queens, and evolution. Can't imagine any of that stuff would cause a physical reaction in a reader.

Anyway, like uncle Walt said: no definition of poetry has ever been arrived at but that some great exception hasn't arisen. Hell. It is all process, hit and miss.

Terreson

[Ros]

I'd love to read some of your science poems, Terreson. That's partly what started this thread - trying to link the scientific facts with some sort of emotional input to make it a poem rather than a text book! I find it very difficult to make it work properly.

Ros

[Terreson]

Well, Ros, I do have a recent science motivated poem that I can't even figure if it amounts to poetry, much less successfully so. It could certainly use a critical eye, especially since I am probably too attached to it. I'll post it this week.

Terreson