What is Poetry? What is Poetry?: derived from Greek poiesis, ‘making’; cognates with Greek kerdos, “craft, craftiness”; old Irish word cerd (people of the craft, a designation for artisans, including poets) • A made thing, a verbal construct, an event in language. • Poetry, also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, a prosaic ostensible meaning. • Ben Johnson: “the craft of making.” Two basic metaphors for the art of poetry • in the classical world were carpentry and weaving. “Whatsoever else it may be,” W. H. Auden said, “a poem is a verbal artifact which must be as skillfully and solidly constructed as a table or a motorcycle.” • Jonathan Swift, who had said, also impeccably and uninformatively, that style in writing was “the best words in the best order.” • The French poet Paul Valéry said that prose was walking, poetry dancing. Indeed, the original two terms, prosus and versus, meant, respectively, “going straight forth” and “returning”; and that distinction does point up the tendency of poetry to incremental repetition, variation, and the treatment of many matters and different themes in a single recurrent form such as couplet or stanza. • Poetry, even that of the loftiest and, seemingly, that of the wildest odes, had a logic of its own, as severe as that of science; and more difficult, because more subtle, more complex, and dependent on more, and more fugitive causes. In the truly great poets, he would say, there is a reason assignable, not only for every word, but for the position of every word. (Biographia Literaria, chapter 1. • William Carlos Williams defined the poem as “a small (or large) machine made of words.” • Roman Jakobson: “Poeticity is present when the word is felt as a word and not a mere representation of the object being named or an outburst of emotion, when words and their composition, their meaning, their external and internal form, acquire a weight and value of their own instead of referring indifferently to reality.” Poets are gifted with greater organic sensibility. • “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful passion” • “Poetry is born not in the mind but in the heart overflowing with feelings”. • “emotions recollected in tranquility” • good poetry is never an instant expression of powerful emotions. • “Verse will be read a hundred times where Prose is read only once”. • It is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge, the impassioned expression that is in the countenance of all science. • To be incapable of poetic feeling is to be without love of human nature and reverence of God. Poetry must serve the purposes of life and morality. How is poetry composed? • A matter of Powerful FEELING & TEMPERAMENT. “Poetry is born not in the mind but in the heart overflowing with feelings”. • 4 stages before it is composed: Firstly, there is the observation or perception to some object, character or event which sets up powerful emotions in poet’s mind. Secondly, there is recollection and contemplation of that emotion in silence. MEMORY plays a very important part. An interval of time must elapse, in which the first experience sinks deep into the poet’s insight and becomes his part and parcel. During the interval, the mind ponders and the impression received is purged of the unneeded elements or superfluities and is “qualified by various pleasures”. This filtering process is very slow; time and solitude are vital. Thus, the poet’s emotion is universalized. Thirdly, the interrogation of memory by the poet sets up, it is very much like the first emotion, but is purged of all superfluities and constitutes a “state of enjoyment”. Here “tranquility disappears”. ANXIETY TO CREATE… The ability to create comes from nature and not from premeditated art. The fourth and last stage is of composition. The poet must convey that “overbalance of pleasure” and his own “state of enjoyment” to others. 2 MASTER PIECES: AT A GLANCE Daffodils (1807) I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the Milky Way, They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The waves beside them danced, but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company: I gazed—and gazed—but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought: For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils. Introduction to Poetry - Billy Collins I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide or press an ear against its hive. I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out, or walk inside the poem’s room and feel the walls for a light switch. I want them to waterski across the surface of a poem waving at the author’s name on the shore. But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means. Relish them… Introduction to Poetry - Billy Collins I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide or press an ear against its hive. I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out, or walk inside the poem’s room and feel the walls for a light switch. I’m Nobody! Who are you? – Emily Dickenson I’m Nobody! Who are you? Are you – Nobody – too? Then there’s a pair of us! Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know! How dreary – to be – Somebody! How public – like a Frog – To tell one’s name – the livelong June – To an admiring Bog! I want them to waterski across the surface of a poem waving at the author’s name on the shore. Peas & Honey But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it. I eat my peas with honey. I’ve done it all my life. It makes the peas taste funny. But it keeps them on the knife! They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means. • l(a... (a leaf falls on l oneliness) • l(a le af fa ll s) one l iness Relish them… Played wildly with form and spacing, punctuation, capitalization, overall grammar and pacing. Peas & Honey I eat my peas with honey. I’ve done it all my life. It makes the peas taste funny. But it keeps them on the knife! • l(a... (a leaf falls on loneliness) • l(a le af fa ll s) one l iness 2 MASTER PIECES: AT A GLANCE Sonnet 73: That time of year thou mayst in me behold BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE That time of year thou mayst in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. In me thou see'st the twilight of such day As after sunset fadeth in the west, Which by and by black night doth take away, Death's second self, that seals up all in rest. In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, As the death-bed whereon it must expire, Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by. This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong, To love that well which thou must leave ere long. SONNET 73 PARAPHRASE That time of year thou mayst in me behold In me you can see that time of year When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang When a few yellow leaves or none at all hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, On the branches, shaking against the cold, Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. Bare ruins of church choirs where lately the sweet birds sang. In me thou seest the twilight of such day In me you can see only the dim light that remains As after sunset fadeth in the west, After the sun sets in the west, Which by and by black night doth take away, Which is soon extinguished by black night, Death's second self, that seals up all in rest. The image of death that envelops all in rest. In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire I am like a glowing ember That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, Lying on the dying flame of my youth, As the death-bed whereon it must expire, As on the death bed where it must finally expire, Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by. Consumed by that which once fed it. This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more This you sense, and it makes your love more strong, determined To love that well which thou must leave ere long. Causing you to love that which you must give up before long.
