Modern and Contempory American Poetry

[ussusimiel]

Well, really, there are/have been almost zero radical subjects in poetry

I agree with you, but a large part of this course (being post-modern oriented) was about meta ideas about language (and thus poetry). From what I see, cummings (despite his typographical innovations) doesn't address these in the content of his poems (which is why, I think, that we didn't do any of his poems on the course).

....all that matters is the themes [what you have to say about a subject] and the form [how you say it] which together with other things result in the art/importance...which you are either missing or dismissing when you say you are "getting PAST the "typographical idiosyncrasies."

I won't argue with you here. I've no doubt that I am 'missing' some of what cummings is doing. Part of it may be to do with what I perceive as the light tone in many of his poems. One of my favourites is this one:

the little horse is newlY

Born)he knows nothing,and feels
everything;all around whom is

perfectly a strange
ness(Of sun
light and of fragrance and of

Singing)is ev
erywhere(a welcom
ing dream:is amazing)
a worlD.and in

this world lies:smoothbeautifuL
ly folded;a(brea
thing a gro

Wing)silence,who;
is:somE

oNe.

For someone of my persuasion (prone to be overly serious) the typographical quirkyness goes aginst the grain of the zen nature of the theme. I still like the poem, and it is obviously working because I remember it, but in the more general sweep of his work I get a bit tired of the quirkyness. After a while my experience is that it is one-note rather than too many notes.

u.

[ussusimiel]

Here are some sections from Walt Whitman's 'Song of Myself' and a couple of people who might be said to be writing in a Whitmanesque manner, an early Carlos Williams poem and one by that angelheaded hipster wastrel, Allan Ginsberg :

Song of Myself

1

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.


8

.....The blab of the pave, tires of carts, sluff of boot-soles, talk of
the promenaders,
The heavy omnibus, the driver with his interrogating thumb, the
clank of the shod horses on the granite floor,
The snow-sleighs, clinking, shouted jokes, pelts of snow-balls,
The hurrahs for popular favorites, the fury of rous'd mobs,
The flap of the curtain'd litter, a sick man inside borne to the hospital,
The meeting of enemies, the sudden oath, the blows and fall,
The excited crowd, the policeman with his star quickly working his
passage to the centre of the crowd,

......I mind them or the show or resonance of them--I come and I depart.


51

......Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?
Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,
(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.)

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.).....


52

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab
and my loitering.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

The last scud of day holds back for me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow'd wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.



Smell
by William Carlos Williams

Oh strong-ridged and deeply hollowed
nose of mine! what will you not be smelling?
What tactless asses we are, you and I, boney nose,
always indiscriminate, always unashamed,
and now it is the souring flowers of the bedreggled
poplars: a festering pulp on the wet earth
beneath them. With what deep thirst
we quicken our desires
to that rank odor of a passing springtime!
Can you not be decent? Can you not reserve your ardors
for something less unlovely? What girl will care
for us, do you think, if we continue in these ways?
Must you taste everything? Must you know everything?
Must you have a part in everything?



A Supermarket in California
by Allen Ginsberg

..........What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for
I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache
self-conscious looking at the full moon.
..........In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went
into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
..........What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families
shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the
avocados, babies in the tomatoes!--and you, Garcia Lorca, what
were you doing down by the watermelons?

..........I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber,
poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery
boys.
..........I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the
pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
..........I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans
following you, and followed in my imagination by the store
detective.
..........We strode down the open corridors together in our
solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen
delicacy, and never passing the cashier.

..........Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in
an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight?
..........(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the
supermarket and feel absurd.)
..........Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The
trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be
lonely.

..........Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love
past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
..........Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher,
what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and
you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat
disappear on the black waters of Lethe?

u.

[Holsety]

ussu I was going to post the Ginsberg and Whitman poems, but then I scrolled to the bottom and you beat me to it!

I'm actually gonna post a link to something I just put in the hall of gifts because it is bad riff on Wallace Stevens's XIII ways of looking at a blackbird poem.

kevinswatch.ihugny.com/phpBB2/viewtopic ... 864#916864

If you just read one I would read XVII.

I also wanted to post the poems below.

Louis Untermeyer, ed. (1885–1977). Modern American Poetry. 1919.

Carl Sandburg. 1878–

78. Grass

PILE the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work—
I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun. 5
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?

I am the grass. 10
Let me work.

A.E.F.

There will be a rusty gun on the wall, sweetheart,
The rifle grooves curling with flakes of rust.
A spider will make a silver string nest in the
darkest, warmest corner of it.
The trigger and the range-finder, they too will be rusty.
And no hands will polish the gun, and it will hang on the wall.
Forefingers and thumbs will point casually toward it.
It will be spoken among half-forgotten, whished-to-be-forgotten things.
They will tell the spider: Go on, you're doing good work.
Carl Sandburg

[Vraith]

For someone of my persuasion (prone to be overly serious) the typographical quirkyness goes aginst the grain of the zen nature of the theme.
u.

Somehow I missed this post. On the fragment above...someone has a signature quote around here that says the first step to understanding zen is throw away the zen books. [or something like that...].

I'm going to say something here that will possibly annoy purist/modernist/historicalist folk:

What most places SAY they are teaching about poetry is, in one form another, "EVERYTHING matters to the meaning." [they also pretend to teach a bunch of other things they aren't].

There is nothing "zen" about seriousness. There is nothing superior about "the bards" sonnet form. [especially nothing superior at conveying MEANING in the FORM. Honestly, people say "look what he could DO following the rules, isn't it AMAZING?"...bullshit, we should wonder what he could do if stupid freaking art-masters and grammartarians and stupid people in authority didn't have control over what got published.]

[Holsety]

Vraith I love sonnets and other formal poetry, and I love thinking about them, and I love trying to wring meaning out from every bit of it. I believe the first time I was ever openly taught about a, paradigm, to view poetry, was more from either a "author is dead" viewpoint or, perhaps less extreme, that poems by a poet often express a voice divorced from the poet's biography and even their comments on their poems.

I don't even know what nothing zen about seriousness means though (I don't really know a lot about zen). I guess that is because I associate seriousness more with being blunt, direct, and honest (basically to one's own standards of what those mean between what you think, feel and express) than about being sad or funny. For me, it seems that people approach poetry, like most things, differently, because even if they have a fairly similar view of what poetry "basically" is, they approach it from different perspectives with different desires.
(And that is said in a brutally simple manner that I hope will be taken as a bit general for the sake of not being said more longform)

I personally feel that people should at least consider exploring "strictures" of earlier times if they actually spend time learning about "standard" poetry in school (expression recorded in language, spoken or written), just to see what they feel works or doesn't work for certain kinds of things. But only that they consider that.

[ussusimiel]

....[especially nothing superior at conveying MEANING in the FORM. Honestly, people say "look what he could DO following the rules, isn't it AMAZING?"...bullshit, we should wonder what he could do if stupid freaking art-masters and grammartarians and stupid people in authority didn't have control over what got published.]

I think I agree with you here. IMO, there's no merit in writing a sonnet if what you have to say fits better into a haiku or a fifty verse epic. However, there are certain times when the sonnet is the right form for what needs to be said. I also think that it is likely that the more form a piece of writing has the more impact it will probably have (assuming the form is integral to the work rather than imposed upon it). This is why diaries, dream journals and teenage poetry rarely provide us with memorable material. The formlessness of the language mirrors the unformed nature of the material (by the author) even if it is as highly symbolic and meaningful as something like a dream can be.

u.

[Avatar]

I do like Whitman.

--A

[Vraith]

I personally feel that people should at least consider exploring "strictures" of earlier times if they actually spend time learning about "standard" poetry in school (expression recorded in language, spoken or written), just to see what they feel works or doesn't work for certain kinds of things. But only that they consider that.

Oh, I think they should, too. People [especially someone who wants to be "somebody [...] like even a poet"] should know and learn to handle all the tools available. There are reasons rhythm and rhyme and such have impact/power. [some of those are even neuro/biological it appears]

And the sonnet that begins "that time of year thou mayst in me behold" just screams to be a sonnet. [also, for other reasons, the one "my mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;"]
Though I mostly find the sonnets workmanlike with flashes. If he'd followed the flashes to create the forms instead of shoving them in the mold he'd probably have made more great poems [maybe more failures, too...who knows? just speculation/a thought.]

But [and connected to u.'s latest], the techniques are part of the toolbox, the idea/vision/inspiration the raw material.
Too me, it's most similar to verbal sculpture [analogically, anyway]. They [sculptors] seem to love saying the piece is already in the stone [or whatever], they just reveal it/let it out.

[ussusimiel]

Though I mostly find the sonnets workmanlike with flashes. If he'd followed the flashes to create the forms instead of shoving them in the mold he'd probably have made more great poems [maybe more failures, too...who knows? just speculation/a thought.]

Some would say that Shakespeare said everything he needed to say in the plays. I've never been much of a fan of the sonnets, I find them too dense and knotted, as if too much pressure has been put on the language and deformed it as a result. There is, however, a book called Reading Shakespeare's Sonnets by the Scottish poet Don Paterson that's supposed to be good. I hope to read it soon.

u.

[ussusimiel]

After we'd looked at Dickenson and Whitman we did a bit on Imagism and its influence on American poetry. It's also of interest for later on when we come across some poems (by people like Kenneth Koch) which riff off these Imagist poems (and others like Frost's 'Mending Wall').

I've started with a brief definition of Imagism as was given to us on the course and then I've included some Imagist and Imagist-influenced poems:

Imagism is the name given to a movement in poetry, originating in 1912 and represented by Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell, and others, aiming at clarity of expression through the use of precise visual images. In the early period often written in the French form Imagisme.

A group of American and English poets whose poetic program was formulated about 1912 by Ezra Pound - in conjunction with fellow poets Hilda Doolittle (H.D.), Richard Aldington, and F.S. Flint - and was inspired by the critical views of T.E. Hulme, in revolt against the careless thinking and Romantic optimism he saw prevailing.

The Imagists wrote succinct verse of dry clarity and hard outline in which an exact visual image made a total poetic statement. Imagism was a successor to the French Symbolist movement, but, whereas Symbolism had an affinity with music, Imagism sought analogy with sculpture. In 1914 Pound turned to Vorticism, and Amy Lowell largely took over leadership of the group. Among others who wrote Imagist poetry were John Gould Fletcher and Harriet Monroe; and Conrad Aiken, Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, D.H. Lawrence, and T.S. Eliot were influenced by it in their own poetry.

.....From an Imagist manifesto:

1. To use the language of common speech, but to employ the exact word, not the nearly-exact, nor the merely decorative word.

2. We believe that the individuality of a poet may often be better expressed in free verse than in conventional forms. In poetry, a new cadence means a new idea.

3. Absolute freedom in the choice of subject.

4. To present an image. We are not a school of painters, but we believe that poetry should render particulars exactly and not deal in vague generalities, however magnificent and sonorous. It is for this reason that we oppose the cosmic poet, who seems to us to shirk the real difficulties of his art.

5. To produce a poetry that is hard and clear, never blurred nor indefinite.

6. Finally, most of us believe that concentration is of the very essence of poetry.

Sea Rose
By H. D.

Rose, harsh rose,
marred and with stint of petals,
meagre flower, thin,
sparse of leaf,

more precious
than a wet rose
single on a stem—
you are caught in the drift.

Stunted, with small leaf,
you are flung on the sand,
you are lifted
in the crisp sand
that drives in the wind.

Can the spice-rose
drip such acrid fragrance
hardened in a leaf?


In a Station of the Metro
By Ezra Pound

The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough.


"The Encounter"
by Ezra Pound

All the while they were talking the new morality
Her eyes explored me.
And when I rose to go
Her fingers were like the tissue
Of a Japanese paper napkin.

These are all by William Carlos Williams (can't escape him ):

"Lines"


Leaves are graygreen,
the glass broken, bright green.


Between Walls


the back wings
of the

hospital where
nothing

will grow lie
cinders

in which shine
the broken

pieces of a green
bottle



The Red Wheelbarrow


so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.


"The rose is obsolete..."
from 'Spring and All'

The rose is obsolete
but each petal ends in
an edge, the double facet
cementing the grooved
columns of air--The edge
cuts without cutting
meets--nothing--renews
itself in metal or porcelain--
whither? It ends--
But if it ends
the start is begun
so that to engage roses
becomes a geometry--
Sharper, neater, more cutting
figured in majolica--
the broken plate
glazed with a rose
Somewhere the sense
makes copper roses
steel roses--
The rose carried weight of love
but love is at an end--of roses
It is at the edge of the
petal that love waits
Crisp, worked to defeat
laboredness--fragile
plucked, moist, half-raised
cold, precise, touching
What
The place between the petal's
edge and the
From the petal's edge a line starts
that being of steel
infinitely fine, infinitely
rigid penetrates
the Milky Way
without contact--lifting
from it--neither hanging
nor pushing--
The fragility of the flower
unbruised
penetrates space

u.

[Avatar]

The last one was the best for me. I think I prefer stuff that is influenced by the movement, (like Eliot), rather than is actually part of it.

I can immediately see how The Wasteland shows this kind of influence for example, without sticking too strongly to the concepts mentioned in the manifesto above.

--A

[Holsety]

The wheelbarrow poem is one I love because it's one of the typically presented poems in school, and it's just so great. I love it. The wheelbarrow is pretty much my hero.

The rose poem was also soo good. I've been reading Yeats recently so it was perhaps odd to have that sticking in the back of my mind. But ya, I liked it a lot. Regarding interpretation, w/e, there were only parts I really felt I drew something from, yet I'm very satisfied with what I got.

[ussusimiel]

The last one was the best for me. I think I prefer stuff that is influenced by the movement, (like Eliot), rather than is actually part of it.

I agree with you and I think Imagism's influence is still powerful on modern-day writing. The movement itself, while important, didn't last that long. Pound was one of the first to leave. H.D. is often seen as a purely Imagist poet but feminist critics would say that she really only used it as cover. Someone like Carlos Williams went on to develop his own unique style. (I think people who write lyric poetry today have many of the Imagist ideas in the back of their mind: show don't tell, be concrete, any subject is suitable for poetry and so on. (I know I do ))

The rose poem was also soo good. I've been reading Yeats recently so it was perhaps odd to have that sticking in the back of my mind.

Yeats used the rose as a symbol a lot in his early poems. He finished his second collection (called The Rose ) in 1893 with the lines:

I cast my heart into my rhymes,
That you, in the dim coming times,
May know how my heart went with them
After the red-rose-bordered hem.

It's probably this sort of use of the rose as a symbol that the Imagists were working against. Yeats was caught between being a Victorian and a Modernist but because he's such a great poet it didn't really matter. As Av said it's really in Eliot that we see the modernist techniques being used fully.

The wheelbarrow poem is one I love because it's one of the typically presented poems in school, and it's just so great. I love it. The wheelbarrow is pretty much my hero.

I won't risk tarnishing your hero by offering an interpretation of the poem instead I'll just mention a few things that were said on the course about the other poems:

• - in the H.D poem the Imagist manifesto is apparent in her valuing the reality of the ragged sea rose more highly than something like the American Beauty Rose.
  
  - in Pound's 'In the Station of the Metro' he reduced pages of poetry down to this one image; an extreme exercise in concentration.
  
  - Carlos Williams' 'Between Walls' uses previously unpoetic images like cinders and broken glass to suggest beauty, and "The Rose is Obsolete" begins at the edge of the old symbol to suggest new imagined roses: copper, steel, and universal. This comes very close to 'a rose is a rose is a rose' and the next poems that I'll post will be by Gertrude Stein as they take the next modernist step after Imagism (and that's when the real difficulty begins ).

u.

[Vraith]

The wheelbarrow poem is one I love because it's one of the typically presented poems in school, and it's just so great. I love it. The wheelbarrow is pretty much my hero.

The rose poem was also soo good. I've been reading Yeats recently so it was perhaps odd to have that sticking in the back of my mind. But ya, I liked it a lot. Regarding interpretation, w/e, there were only parts I really felt I drew something from, yet I'm very satisfied with what I got.

I swear that poem [and Eliot's "J. Alfred"] must be invisibly to me [but visible to everyone else] hovering over my head...or maybe just flashing signs at folk "Mention Wheelbarrow!" "Talk about Fog and Cat's Feet!"...they stalk me and show up in the strangest places [at least they belong in this particular place!]

It's always fascinated me how many ways/things roses work. One could [hey...maybe that's an idea if I ever want to do something historical and long, which I probably never will] almost do a complete and accurate 1000 years of Europe [especially brit/u.k involved...they're truly obsessed] talking only about things attached to roses.

I'm surprised you [u.] didn't mention the imagist/haiku connection...did it not come up? [or perhaps saving it for later, when haiku has a wider and somewhat different kind of influence?]

[ussusimiel]

I'm surprised you [u.] didn't mention the imagist/haiku connection...did it not come up? [or perhaps saving it for later, when haiku has a wider and somewhat different kind of influence?]

The influence of the Oriental (especially Japan) was mentioned but not emphasised. While haiku are not strictly Imagist their affinity would actually mark them out as not fitting in with the strictly post-modern themes of the course. Any deliberate meaning was viewed with suspicion as the course developed

It's always fascinated me how many ways/things roses work. One could [hey...maybe that's an idea if I ever want to do something historical and long, which I probably never will] almost do a complete and accurate 1000 years of Europe [especially brit/u.k involved...they're truly obsessed] talking only about things attached to roses.

I had an interesting conversation with a friend (who's a poet) about this. He compared the rose to the lotus flower of the East, but felt that the redness symbolised a wound in the Western psyche whereas the lotus symbolises perfection. I'm still thinking about that.

I swear that poem [and Eliot's "J. Alfred"] must be invisibly to me [but visible to everyone else] hovering over my head...or maybe just flashing signs at folk "Mention Wheelbarrow!" "Talk about Fog and Cat's Feet!"...they stalk me and show up in the strangest places [at least they belong in this particular place!]

That's weird! Give us an example.

u.

[Vraith]

I'm surprised you [u.] didn't mention the imagist/haiku connection...did it not come up? [or perhaps saving it for later, when haiku has a wider and somewhat different kind of influence?]

The influence of the Oriental (especially Japan) was mentioned but not emphasised. While haiku are not strictly Imagist their affinity would actually mark them out as not fitting in with the strictly post-modern themes of the course. Any deliberate meaning was viewed with suspicion as the course developed

It's always fascinated me how many ways/things roses work. One could [hey...maybe that's an idea if I ever want to do something historical and long, which I probably never will] almost do a complete and accurate 1000 years of Europe [especially brit/u.k involved...they're truly obsessed] talking only about things attached to roses.

I had an interesting conversation with a friend (who's a poet) about this. He compared the rose to the lotus flower of the East, but felt that the redness symbolised a wound in the Western psyche whereas the lotus symbolises perfection. I'm still thinking about that.

I swear that poem [and Eliot's "J. Alfred"] must be invisibly to me [but visible to everyone else] hovering over my head...or maybe just flashing signs at folk "Mention Wheelbarrow!" "Talk about Fog and Cat's Feet!"...they stalk me and show up in the strangest places [at least they belong in this particular place!]

That's weird! Give us an example.

u.

On haiku a nod and a grin and a shocky-face [all in agreement] and a comment: someone could, hell someone probably has, do serious and long analysis work...but whatever the differences there is an essential technique/purpose in common. The Image draws one blade, haiku draws two, but both intend to cut away veils.

Your friend's lotus/rose thing is definitely worth a good ponder or several.
I have an opinion...not positive...on roses. They aren't that pretty, and the chaining and training of them has ruined the one thing I think special...the scent.

I won't get into likely boring stories...but, I will say [oldest thing] that Prufrock entered my life, somehow, in a bar in Darmstadt, Germany connected with the song "Puff, the Magic Dragon" [I wasn't sober, long time ago, don't recall HOW they were connected..but more fun/interesting/important things in my life came out of that bar than anywhere else, I think].
And [newest thing] Wheelbarrow came up at a yard sale through my sister-in-law's mother-in-law, on speaker phone, between MN and TX.
[she doesn't speak english, I don't speak spanish].

[Holsety]

It's probably this sort of use of the rose as a symbol that the Imagists were working against. Yeats was caught between being a Victorian and a Modernist but because he's such a great poet it didn't really matter. As Av said it's really in Eliot that we see the modernist techniques being used fully.

Ya. As a person, I've found Yeats's poetry very "use"ful in criticizing myself in some senses, and also in forgiving myself. In the end the whole thing may be quite indulgent and even regressive! I think it's been humbling. It's also interesting to feel points of complete departure.

I won't risk tarnishing your hero by offering an interpretation of the poem

lol. Maybe I should say a little more. It's an interesting poem for me, because (for me) it seems to take out a great deal of the "humanization" of objects that one feels accustomed to (not always within poetry), and in the process, they come across a bit more important.

And in general, I feel like the poem is simultaneously demonstrative and performative - well, those are the words that come to mind. What I mean is that the poem is written in such a way that (for me) the poem and everything in it comes to depend upon the wheelbarrow. In an actual sense, I figure the rainwater (or rather its position) is the only thing that "seems" to depend on the wheelbarrow, to me. This sort of trick is actually very easy to pull off, but it does tend to delight me - maybe it only shows I'm easily mislead or whatever.

[ussusimiel]

Now it's time to start the more difficult side of modernism in American poetry. Before I did the course I had always avoided avant garde and experimental poetry for a couple of reasons. Firstly I have always suspected that if you write poems that are meant to be deliberately meaningless then you run the risk of them all essentially being the same. I have softened in this position somewhat, but my experience still tends to be the same as before I did the course. For me meaninglessness always feels the same.

The second reason that I have avoided this kind of poetry is a nagging sense that the piss is being pulled out of me. How am I meant to the tell the difference between one piece of gibberish and another? During the course I came to an understanding of the level of dedication of the people involved and their love of language. What I realised is that these writers are suspicious of meaning not of language. And, for me, as Robert Frost might say, that makes all the difference.

I am going to introduce Gertrude Stein first (and gently) with a few short poems. After that I'll post some of her writings on writing, which, hopefully, will cast some light on why she writes the way she does. Here are some poems:

A LONG DRESS

What is the current that makes machinery, that makes it crackle, what is the current that presents a long line and a necessary waist. What is this current.

What is the wind, what is it.

Where is the serene length, it is there and a dark place is not a dark place, only a white and red are black, only a yellow and green are blue, a pink is scarlet, a bow is every color. A line distinguishes it. A line just distinguishes it.



A CARAFE, THAT IS A BLIND GLASS

A kind in glass and a cousin, a spectacle and nothing strange a single hurt color and an arrangement in a system to pointing. All this and not ordinary, not unordered in not resembling. The difference is spreading.



WATER RAINING

Water astonishing and difficult altogether makes a meadow and a stroke.



MALACHITE

The sudden spoon is the same in no size. The sudden spoon is the wound in the decision.

u.

[Vraith]

What I realised is that these writers are suspicious of meaning not of language. And, for me, as Robert Frost might say, that makes all the difference.
u.

OTOH: A prof of mine [ also does well with his poetry on the side]
says the more talks/presentations/lectures he gets invited to do the more he distrusts language.

And notice Frost said he'd be telling it "with a sigh" and "that has made all the difference." BUT he didn't tell what KIND of sigh, nor did he tell what kind of difference....though it seems you've chosen an expansive sort of difference for it to make, which is cool.

Odd tangent that just poked me in the brain:
Does anyone seriously thing a model T is better than Lexus?
A Fokker E1 better than the coming F35?
But poetry and writing and philosophy in general are OBVIOUSLY crap, not "real" art...compared to the masters.
Hah.

[ussusimiel]

Odd tangent that just poked me in the brain:
Does anyone seriously thing a model T is better than Lexus?
A Fokker E1 better than the coming F35?
But poetry and writing and philosophy in general are OBVIOUSLY crap, not "real" art...compared to the masters.

I'm not sure whether I should rise to this one, if it was the 'Tank I definitely wouldn't

I cordially suggest that your analogy doesn't work and actually contains within it the reasons why that may be so.

My argument would contend that the rise of the very processes that produce the machines you mention are a symptom of the alienating processes in modern life that limit (not rule out) the possibility of contemporary poetry and writing (I am unsure about philosophy) reaching the quality of those who have gone before.

Shakespeare is an example of a writer who lived on the cusp of the transition from a largely oral culture to a largely written one. A person in an oral culture is soaked in language in a way that is not possible in the modern era, where much of the language we encounter comes from the printed page and where we are bombarded and immersed in images from TV, cinema and advertising. Yes, we are probably exposed to a wider variety of language and vocabulary but we do not remember or embody it in the same way as someone from an oral culture.

I would hold that this increased distance from language (caused by technology) mitigates, in general, against writing and poetry. This doesn't mean that individuals can't transcend these barriers, but, IMO, it does mean that much of modern writing is of a lower quality than before. This is balanced to a certain extent by the artistic power with which the new technologies are wielded. Directors like Kieslowski, for example, produce powerful work that simply was not possible in previous ages.

u.